Time magazine named tech titan and artificial intelligence advocate Elon Musk as the latest in its annual list of “The 100 Most Influential People in AI” However, this year's cover features actress Scarlett Johansson.
The magazine created a composite image for its 2024 cover, featuring photos of 18 AI leaders, including Nvidia president Jensen Huang at the top and the star of the “Black Widow” movie.
The second TIME100 AI edition, released Thursday, also features leading CEOs, founders and influencers in fast-growing fields, including Anthropik's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman.
But Musk, who launched xAI last summer and whose chatbot, Grok, has grown in popularity by beating out rivals such as ChatGPT, was conspicuously absent from the paper's pages.
The century-old magazine is now owned by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, whose software company Antropic's Major Investors and OpenAI are collaborating to $500 Million AI Fund Supporting emerging businesses.
“Companies on the TIME100 AI list that are backed by Salesforce Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Salesforce.com, whose CEO is Time magazine's owner and co-chairman, contain full disclosure,” a Time spokesperson told The Post in a statement.
Time magazine's puzzling decision to ignore the founder of Tesla and SpaceX has caused an uproar on social media.
“Ask anyone on this top 100 list and they'll say Elon should be on this list too,” one user posted to X.
Another user said the insult was evidence of Time magazine's “bias and lack of integrity” and “personal grudge against him.”
The billionaire founded Neuralink in 2016 and made headlines earlier this year when he successfully implanted brain chips in paralyzed patients, allowing them to browse the web and play internet games with their minds.
This week, Musk brought online Colossus, the world's most powerful Nvidia GPU supercomputer.
“I thought it was cute that Elon Musk wasn't on the cover of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in AI,” another social media user posted to X. “When I heard he wasn't on the list I had to check it out for myself. My f**king car is self-driving lol.”
Social media users also questioned the inclusion of Johansson on the list, given her controversial relationship with OpenAI. He allegedly plagiarized her voice. Training a chatbot without her permission – Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor and YouTuber Marques Brownlee.
The list also included Musk's rivals such as Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Google's Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
“If in 2023 the world of AI will be dominated by the emergence of startup labs like OpenAI, Anthropic and their competitors, this year has seen the outsized influence of a few tech giants, as critics and advocates have noted.” Editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs wrote Thursday:“This year's list exemplifies what's possible when AI moves from the lab to the world.”
Jacobs emphasized that artificial intelligence is a rapidly evolving field, and with that change new leaders will emerge.
He noted that 91 people on the 2024 list were not on last year's list, which he said “shows how rapidly this field is changing.”
According to a press release, the magazine's editors and reporters solicited nominations from dozens of industry leaders and experts to compile the list.
