TIME Magazine has just named the "AI Architects" as the 2025 Person of the Year. Look at this image: Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, Sam Altman... all sitting on a beam, recreating that historical 1932 photo. But instead of workers, they placed billionaires.
Hi, I'm Laura, a master's degree holder in Communication and Information and an undergraduate student in Internet Systems. And here we analyze media and technology without a filter. This cover isn't just "cheeky" or in bad taste. It's a business move.
The owner of TIME, Marc Benioff, is also the owner of Salesforce. Benioff has invested billions in AI within his company, but there’s a problem: investors are anxious because the financial return on all this AI isn't coming as promised.
The acquisition of media assets by capital holders aims, above all, at the instrumentalization of credibility. Journalism's social function is to guard the public interest, but this ownership confers symbolic capital that is diverted to validate private corporate interests.
It's a play in three acts: 1. Benioff buys Time; 2. Salesforce spends heavily on AI and the market gets skeptical; 3. He uses his world-renowned magazine to claim the "AI Architects" are the heroes of the year. This is propaganda disguised as serious journalism.
The effect is the legitimation of the narrative on a planetary scale. Time acts as a gatekeeper, validating the biased thesis that these billionaire investments are justified and inevitably successful, regardless of the actual market skepticism.
We must reach two fundamental conclusions. First: Priority of Agenda and Financial Interest. What dominates the public debate often has a strong private financial interest behind it, while crucial social agendas are ignored because they contradict the agenda of large capital.
Second: The Farce of Impartiality. It is a myth to think that media is impartial. Position is inevitably influenced by the owner. It's not just individual ethics; it's a matter of ownership structure.
The algorithm IS NOT NEUTRAL. Media ownership follows the same logic. We must demand transparency about bias and an irreducible commitment to the truth, even when it goes against the owner's interests.
Ultimately, the essential question that emerges is: can a vehicle of information truly serve the public interest while belonging to the interests it should be overseeing? I want to know what you think in the comments.