You've probably heard all about TIME Magazine's choice for the 2025 Person of the Year. On December 11th, TIME gave that honor to the "Architects of Artificial Intelligence (AI)" for 2025. Do you agree with that choice? Was artificial intelligence the most dominant news story of 2025? I would have made a different choice, but first, let's read TIME's reasoning.
According to TIME, "2025 was the year when artificial intelligence’s full potential roared into view, and when it became clear that there will be no turning back. For delivering the age of thinking machines, for wowing and worrying humanity, for transforming the present and transcending the possible, the Architects of AI are TIME's 2025 Person of the Year. One of the cover images replicates the iconic “Lunch Atop a Skyscraper” photograph from the 1930's, showing eight tech leaders sitting across the beam. And a second cover image shows scaffolding surrounding giant letters reading AI."
The magazine has chosen a "Person of the Year" since 1927 based on who shaped headlines the most over the past 12 months, according to its editors. However, many choices have been controversial. In 1938, Adolf Hitler was chosen, Joseph Stalin was chosen twice (in 1939 and 1942), Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini was chosen in 1979, and President Donald Trump was chosen twice (in 2016 and in 2024).
According to TIME, "It was hard to read or watch anything without being confronted with news about the rapid advancement of a technology and the people driving it. Those stories unleashed a million debates about how disruptive AI would be for our lives. No business leader could talk about the future without invoking the impact of this technological revolution. No parent or teacher could ignore how their teenager or student was using it. These new tools can feel like magic. In the past few weeks alone, we’ve learned that AI could facilitate communication with whales, solve an unsolved 30-year-old math problem, and outperform traditional hurricane-prediction models. These systems are improving at a blistering pace, taking seconds to perform work that once took people hours.
All this progress comes with trade-offs: The amount of energy required to run these systems drains resources. Jobs are going poof. Misinformation proliferates as AI posts and videos make it harder to determine what’s real. Large-scale cyberattacks are possible without human intervention. There is also an extraordinary concentration of power among a handful of business leaders, in a manner that hasn’t been witnessed since the Gilded Age. If the past is prologue, this will result in both significant advancements and greater inequality. AI companies are now lashed to the global economy tighter than ever. It is a gamble of epic proportions, and fears of an economic bubble have grown.
Person of the Year is a powerful way to focus the world’s attention on the people that shape our lives. And this year, no one had a greater impact than the individuals who imagined, designed, and built AI. Humanity will determine AI’s path forward, and each of us can play a role in determining AI’s structure and future. Our work has trained it and sustained it, and now we find ourselves moving through a world increasingly defined by it. Even as the growth of these models relies on neural pathways that appear to copy our own—they learn, speak, argue, cajole, and, yes, their ability to do these things can be as frightening as it is astonishing—we know that there is a difference between us and our creation. For these reasons, we recognize a force that has dominated the year’s headlines, for better or for worse. For delivering the age of thinking machines, for wowing and worrying humanity, for transforming the present and transcending the possible, the Architects of AI are TIME’s 2025 Person of the Year."
However, the story that was on most people's minds during 2025 centered around immigration, the ICE raids, and the related protests. Therefore, I would have chosen the ICE PROTESTORS as the "People of the Year." Back in June, protests began in Los Angeles after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided several locations to arrest individuals allegedly involved in illegal immigration to the United States. Some protests turned into riots after protestors clashed with the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), but most remained peaceful and occurred in a small section of Downtown Los Angeles. Raids and protests continued around the country throughout the rest of the year.
Since raids took place at schools to scare innocent children and at workplaces where day laborers assembled, protestors stood up. America was built on its immigrants, and these raids were not the solution. In fact, many citizens were rounded up and also arrested during the raids.
A sign on the Roybal Federal Building on Los Angeles Street in Downtown Los Angeles said it all, "When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty."
Who would you have chosen if you were part of the editorial staff of TIME Magazine?
SHARE THIS: When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. #DebbieLaskeysBlog
Image Credits: TIME Magazine.
Read: MY Choices for TIME Magazine's 2024 Person of the Year:
https://www.debbielaskeysblog.com/2025/01/my-choices-for-time-magazines-2024.html
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comment!