One of the oldest and most impactful media traditions is Time magazine’s Person of the Year title, first given to legendar y aviator Charles Lindbergh after his momentous transatlantic trip in 1927. In addition to individuals, Time has also named organizations and, on rare occasions, even concep ts, such as the “endangered earth” in 1988. The magazine has now identified “the architects” of AI as the most influential figure rather than a single individual as Person of the Year for 2025.
“And this year, no one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI,” Time Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs wrote in a letter to readers. This year, there are two covers: one is an artwork that shows the letters AI surrounded by workers, and the other is a painting that highlights the tech leaders: Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, xAI’s Elon Musk, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, AMD’s Lisa Su, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis, AI “godmother” Fei-Fei Li of Stanford University’s Human-Centered AI Institute and CEO of World Labs, and OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
Interestingly, this is the third instance in the past 50 years that Time’s selection of the person of the year captured pivotal moments in the technological revolution, following “Personal Computer” in 1982 and “You” – indicating the digital communities – in 2006. Now that the age of AI has replaced the social internet made possible by personal digital devices, experts say this shows how rapidly and profoundly AI and the companies behind developing it are changing society (or how it’s perceived to be). The introduction of ChatGPT by OpenAI in late 2022 may have ushered in the current AI era. Indeed, it marked a change-point in the development of human civilization.
And it continues at a steady speed. When AI reached its full potential in 2025, it became evident that there would be no going back or opting out. AI may be the answer to any question that comes up today. Additionally, it attempts to make sense of a hurried blitz toward an unidentified destination. Let us see how AI covered the 2025 pro ceedings, even more effectively than Donald Trump. Leading internet entrepreneurs flocked to Washington, DC, for Trump’s inauguration on January 20 and sat behind him during his speech, setting the tone. That day, a little-known Chinese company, DeepSeek, unveiled a new AI model that alarmed investors and sparked a rallying cry from Silicon Valley.
According to DeepSeek, by building this model in just a few months, utilizing less advanced chips, China was able to close the gap in a competition that Silicon Valley experts hadn’t thought would be close. The revelation of DeepSeek’s discovery strengthened the argument for acceleration for the tech executives influencing Trump’s new AI strategy. Tech giants Masayoshi Son, Larry Ellison, and Sam Altman made their own statement at the White House the following day. They called the project “Stargate” and promised to invest up to $500 billion in the construction of AI data centers around the US.
Global competitiveness, incredible innovation, enormous sums of money, and the alchemizing powers of public and private interests were all foreshadowed in those two days. Trump signed an executive order undermining President Biden’s more circumspect AI policies during that first week of his second term. Trump also approved several AI projects in the months that followed while cutting or freezing massive amounts of federal funding in other sectors. What is the true potential of AI? Well, in November, Jensen Huang told Time, “This is the single most impactful technology of our time.” However, many people think that AI is a bubble, perhaps larger than the dot-com one.
Whether this is the case or not, there are trade-offs associated with all this advancement. The energy needed to operate these systems depletes resources. For the f irst time in histor y, even college-educated people are losing jobs due to new tech. Undoubtedly, some employment may vanish, but this is an entirely unexplored field. As was pointed out by Jensen Huang, ten years ago, some AI scientists expected that AI would eliminate radiologists from the workforce. However, now, radiologists are in greater demand than ever as AI has improved their ability to identify cancer. AI orchestrates deepfakes, AI increases the likelihood of widespread cyberattacks, and AI also makes inequality worse. Many saw the January DeepSeek breakthrough as Beijing’s Sputnik moment. The following month, Alibaba unveiled plans to invest $53 billion in AI over the next three years. Six AI unicorns – StepFun, Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI, MiniMax, 01.
AI, and Baichuan – rose to prominence due to a flood of investment, earning them the moniker China’s “AI Tigers.” However, experts and common p e ople have widely different perspectives on the roles of AI. While leaders, businesspeople, and professionals are mostly overly excited about AI and the “architects” guiding its development, interestingly multiple surveys revealed that average Americans are concerned about AI and would rather prefer the technology be developed safely, even if it means taking its time. For instance, according to a Pew Research Center study published in September, 53 per cent of participants predicted that AI would make people’s capacity for creative thought worse, while 16 per cent predicted that it would make it better and 16 per cent thought that it would make it neither better nor worse.
What about the pulses of people in other countries? As per a Pew Research report from October 2025, of the respondents surveyed in 25 countries, a median of 34 per cent say they are more worried than excited about the growing use of AI, while 42 per cent say they are both worried and excited. Only 16 per cent of respondents are more enthusiastic than worried. In India, 16 per cent are more excited than worried, 39 per cent are equally excited and worried, and 19 per cent are more worried than excited. Well, despite this skepticism, AI has transformed our environment in recent years in novel, enchanted, thrilling, and occasionally terrifying ways. And according to Forrester researcher Thomas Husson, 2025 might be a “tipping point” for how often AI is currently utilized in our daily lives. Thus, despite widespread cautionary notes, as Sam Jacobs of Time has noted, AI’s destiny will be decided by humanity, and each of us may contribute to determining AI’s structure and future. Does that mean that each of us is an “architect” of AI?
(The writer is Professor of Statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.)