TIME’s Person of the Year has been announced for 2025, naming “The Architects of AI” as the recipient of the honorary title, a group of tech leaders including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Lisa Su, Jensen Huang, Demis Hassabis, Dario Amodei, and Fei-Fei Li. This choice has sparked an important conversation about the future of this technology and has led to overall public backlash for several reasons.
The cover for the 2025 issue of TIME Magazine depicted the creators and developers of AI, a technology that has profoundly impacted our world, for better and worse, in 2025. The picture used was an homage to the iconic 1932 photograph, “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper,” which showed 11 steelworkers eating lunch above NYC during Rockefeller Center’s construction. The photograph was a symbol of American resilience and immigrant labor, and critics have described the comparison of these multi-millionaires to the blue-collar individuals originally portrayed as disrespectful and “out-of-touch” with the hard-working people behind America’s industrialization.
Critics have argued that the potential of implementing and developing artificial intelligence at this rapid pace into our everyday lives has led to ethical concerns, such as widespread job loss across the country. According to Econofact, a publication that analyzes nationwide conversation in fact on economic and social policies, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a labor market research firm, attributed 17,375 job cuts to AI between January and September 2025. The selection came amid the controversy about the future of our job industry and what the technology means for certain workplace environments.
Lastly, the ongoing debates about AI’s potential misuse and the hidden dangers of the software were recently revealed through a lawsuit between The New York Times and OpenAI, with claims related to copyright infringement. According to Columbia Undergraduate Law Review, The New York Times claimed that “OpenAI unlawfully used Times content to train its AI models, particularly ChatGPT, and that this use violated copyright law.” The case, which is still ongoing, has raised questions about its impact on journalism, data protection, and privacy, as well as the potential implications of misinformation.
If you’re concerned about the impact of AI or disagree with this year’s selection, you can contact Time Magazine by emailing them at [email protected].
