Time magazine’s 2025 “Person of the Year” cover, dedicated to the “Architects of AI,” has drawn criticism for its visual reworking of the historic photograph “Lunch atop a Skyscraper.” The original 1932 image, shot during the construction of New York’s Rockefeller Center, shows eleven ironworkers casually eating and smoking on a steel beam 850 feet above Manhattan. Although staged as a publicity stunt, it came to symbolise the dangers, dignity and centrality of working‑class labour in building the modern American city.
In Time’s new cover, the anonymous construction workers are replaced by prominent technology leaders associated with artificial intelligence, seated on a similarly suspended beam above a foggy cityscape. The composition directly echoes the earlier photograph but substitutes industrial labourers with billionaires and senior executives in business attire. Critics argue that this shift fundamentally alters the meaning of the reference: an image once read as a tribute to immigrant and working‑class courage is repurposed as a celebration of concentrated tech power.
The cover has arrived amid heightened concern over the social and economic consequences of AI. Researchers, labour unions and policy groups have warned that AI‑driven automation threatens to displace workers in sectors ranging from manufacturing and logistics to customer service, content moderation and back‑office processing, while also intensifying surveillance and productivity pressures on those who remain employed. At the same time, the financial gains from AI are accruing disproportionately to a small number of technology firms and their investors, widening existing inequalities.
Athmaja Biju is the Editor at Abir Pothi. She is a Translator and Writer working on Visual Culture.
