Advances in AI haven’t plateaued or stalled, so we aren’t confronted with a ‘what next’ scenario. The only question is: ‘How soon?’ And in the words of one speculative fiction author (William Gibson), ‘the future is here now – it’s just very evenly distributed.’
AI will eventually percolate into every business function and filter into the fabric of our personal lives. So, here are a few familiar and more exotic AI applications we are sure to read about in 2025 that are set to do both.
Quantum Computing
This month, Google Quantum AI announced that it has produced a new quantum computing chip it has affectionately named ‘Willow’. Its cutting-edge problem-solving abilities are the forerunners of even more powerful chips, propelling the potential of AI into mind-boggling directions.
Will 2025 see Willow’s 105 qubits with real-time error correction capacity finally eclipse binary code computing? In 2025, be prepared for sibling terminologies like ‘post-quantum cryptology’ and ‘neuromorphic computing’ to emerge, proving where there’s a Willow, there’s a way!
Nuclear Fusion Power
Pundits are already predicting Willow or her progeny will help solve the ‘Holy Grail’ of clean energy: the stable containment of turbulent super-heated plasma in fusion reactions. The famous cliché that commercially viable nuclear fusion reactors have always been ‘30 years away and always will be’ may finally be consigned to the sub-atomic drawer.
In February, a team at Princeton University figured out how to theoretically use AI to forecast instabilities in the plasma. You can read the article published by Princeton Engineering, titled ‘Engineers use AI to Wrangle Fusion Power for the Grid’ here. The powerful synergy is obvious: AI-enabled nuclear fusion solves AI’s soaring energy needs.
Arts and Creative Culture
Google’s Brain Team rolled out Imagen to produce detailed visuals from written text for the media and entertainment industry, and generative music programmes like AIVA enabled armchair musicians to create multi-rack symphonies and push the boundaries of composition. Architects plugged exotic ideas into Midjourney and Stable Diffusion software packages, and out came futuristic building concepts.
Through 2024, AI art generators created over 1 billion images, according to a report by AIPRM on AI art statistics. Just think of the reliance on AI-generated visuals in the film industry!
Agentic AI
While a new term to many, Deloitte predicts that in 2025, 25% of companies using Generative AI will launch Agentic AI pilots. These ‘AI agents’ represent software solutions designed to complete tasks with minimal human intervention without needing prompts or programmed with predefined tasks. The Deloitte research, titled ‘Generative AI, Paving the Way for a Transformative Future in Technology, Media, and Telecommunications’, can be found here.
One of the most exciting applications is helping businesses achieve goals, targets, and milestones using Agentic AI’s ‘chaining capability’ to break down complex tasks into smaller, more manageable steps, while learning and evolving as it progresses. Scanning CVs, qualifying sales leads, and handling customer queries may all be automated soon.
Spatial computing
As UX comes to the forefront of product design and launch, spatial computing is bringing together AR (Augmented Reality), VR (Virtual reality), MR (Mixed Reality), and sensory recognition-based computing (speech recognition, eye tracking, motion sensors) into both consumer-based products and businesses.
Gaming, education, healthcare, remote collaboration and training, and industrial modelling will all be beneficiaries. Microsoft’s HoloLens and Apple’s Vision Pro, Meta Quest Pro and MagicLeap are the first of many software rollouts that fall into the broader realm of HCI sciences (Human-Computer Interaction, read our October 2024 newsletter) to create natural-feeling interfacing between the computer-generated reality and the physical world. As the borders blur, we may all find ourselves spaced out in our own unique Metaverse.
We could continue our 2025 foray into the realms of AI’s role in misinformation (we reported in November on Oxford University’s new system that advances the reliability of generative AI models by catching hallucinations in the act) and disinformation; expect ‘AI policing of AI’ to embed in all LLMs and GenAI models soon. Biotechnology, automated vehicles, personalised medicine and diagnostics, blockchain and edge computing, green technologies and nanotechnology will all be propelled forward by advances in AI next year.
Where do YOU want to be by the end of 2025? Using your skills to help save the planet by enabling green technologies? Contributing to design workflows that produce new-age medicines? Defining written protocols to counter cyber threats? Advancing the convergence of human-machine interfacing? Developing roadmaps for corporate targets with Agentic AI, or helping to shape the creativity of AI artists and musicians?
A great thinker (Malcolm Forbes) once philosophised that diversity is the art of thinking independently together. Never have the opportunities for technical communicators been so diverse, exciting, and laden with planet-changing potential!
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