Time dropped tech titan and AI backer Elon Musk from its annual list of the “100 Most Influential People in AI” — but bumped actress Scarlett Johansson to this year’s cover.
The magazine created a composite image for its 2024 cover, showing photos of 18 AI executives, headed by Nvidia boss Jensen Huang, which also featured the Black Widow star prominently.
The second annual edition of TIME100 AI, released Thursday, also highlighted top CEOs, including Dario Amodei of Anthropic and Sam Altman of OpenAI, as well as founders and influencers in the fast-growing field.
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Yet Musk, who launched xAI last summer and whose Grok chatbot has gained traction against rivals such as ChatGPT, was conspicuously absent from its pages.
The century-old magazine is now owned by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, whose software company has been a major investor in AI startup Anthropic, creating a $500 million AI fund to support emerging companies.
“The findings are included across the entire TIME100 AI list for every company mentioned that is backed by Salesforce Ventures, the corporate venture capital arm of Salesforce, of which TIME’s owner and co-chairman is CEO,” a Time spokesperson told The Post in a statement.
Time’s stunning decision to disparage the founder of Tesla and SpaceX led to an uproar on social media.
“Every single person on this top 100 list if asked would say Elon should be on this list,” posted one user on X.
Another user said the insult was proof of Time’s “bias and lack of integrity” and their “personal vendetta against him”.
The billionaire founded Neuralink in 2016, which made headlines earlier this year when it successfully implanted a brain chip in a paralyzed patient, allowing him to surf the web and play online games with his mind.
Just this week, Musk brought Colossus — the world’s most powerful Nvidia GPU supercomputer — online.
“I thought it was cool that Elon Musk wasn’t on the cover of Time’s 100 Most Influential People in AI,” another social media user posted on X. “I had to check myself when I heard he wasn’t on the list. at all.My wild car drives itself lol.
Social media users also questioned the inclusion on the list of Johansson – who clashed with OpenAI for allegedly using her voice to train a chatbot without her permission – Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor and YouTuber Marques Brownlee.
The list also included Musk’s rivals like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, as well as Google chief Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
“If the world of AI was dominated by the emergence of startup labs like OpenAI, Anthropic and their competitors in 2023, this year, as critics and champions have pointed out, we have seen the outsized impact of a small number of tech giants. ,” editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs wrote Thursday. “This year’s list offers examples of the possibilities for AI when it leaves the lab and into the world.”
Jacobs emphasized that artificial intelligence is a rapidly evolving field – and with these changes come new leaders.
He said 91 of the members of the 2024 list were not on last year’s list, which he called “an indication of how quickly this field is changing.”
Its editors and reporters solicited nominations from dozens of industry leaders and experts to compile the list, according to a press release.
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