Critics have criticized Time magazine for not including billionaire tech guru and artificial intelligence financier, Elon Musk on its annual list of the “100 Most Influential People in AI” but putting Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson on this year’s cover.
The magazine made a composite image for its 2024 cover showing the photos of 18 AI leaders, with Nvidia boss Jensen Huang at the top and Johansson also featured prominently.
The second annual TIME100 AI edition also highlighted leading CEOs, including Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, as well as founders and influencers in AI.
Musk’s omission is strange given that he launched Grok, an AI associated with X formerly known as Twitter. Musk also founded Neuralink in 2016, which made headlines early this year when it successfully implanted a brain chip in a paralyzed patient, allowing him to browse the web and play Internet games with his mind. And Just this week, Musk brought Colossus, the world’s most powerful Nvidia GPU supercomputer – online.
Social media users also questioned the inclusion on the list of Johansson, Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor and YouTuber Marques Brownlee.
The list also included Musk rivals like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg as well as Google boss Sundar Pichai and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Times magazine is now owned by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, whose software company has been a major investor in Anthropic and OpenAI (rivals of Musk’s Grok) creating a $500 million AI fund to back emerging companies.
“Every person on this top 100 list if asked would say Elon should be on this list,” one user posted on X.
Another user said the affront was proof of Time’s “bias and lack of integrity” and “their personal vendetta against him.”
“I thought it was cute 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 for myself when I heard he didn’t make the list at all. My f*cking car drives itself lol.”
