Five AI Trends to Watch in 2025 (and Beyond) – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1061

Five AI Trends to Watch in 2025 (and Beyond) – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1061

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1061 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com for publishing your contributions here.

Credit: Brett Sayles

Credit: Christina Morillo

Credit: Ron Lach

This post is inspired by an article by Rob Howard of https://innovatingwithai.com and PWC report. Link at the end.

Preamble

I keep returning to the topic of AI because it is the most happening field right now and shall remain so for the next several years. 

According to PWC (Price Waterhouse Cooper) global report, Artificial Intelligence shall cause to increase global GDP by 14% in 2030. This will be the equivalent of additional $15.7 trillion. The report highlights that:

• Labor productivity improvements will drive initial GDP gains as firms seek to augment the productivity of their labor force with AI technologies and to automate some tasks and roles.

• 45% of total economic gains come from product enhancements and stimulating customer demand. This is because AI will drive greater product variety, attractiveness, and affordability over time.

• The greatest economic gains from AI will be in China – 26% boost to GDP in 2030, and North America – 14.5% boost. This will translate into $10.7 trillion and accounting for almost 70% of the global economic impact.

Despite such great future scenario, Google CEO Sundar Pichai cautions. “When I look at 2025, the low-hanging fruit is gone, the hill is steeper, and you are definitely going to need deeper breakthroughs as we get to the next stage”.

To understand his concern, we need to consider that three kinds of technologies have shaped every industrial revolution.

1. Emerging Tech: Emerging technologies introduce new capabilities.

2. Adjacent Tech: Adjacent technologies enhance the ecosystem, enabling broader adoption and innovation.

3. Disruptive Tech: Disruptive technologies redefine industries, creating winners and losers.

In the second industrial revolution, the emerging tech was electricity, while adjacent tech was the light bulb, and disruptive tech was the elevator. When you combined all three, what the world got were the first skyscrapers – reshaping the urban landscape for over a century to follow.

We now look at the five major AI trends for 2025.

#1 – The Fall of Coding

By the end of 2025, 80% of coding tasks will be doable for non-coders using AI tools.

Developers who once guarded the gates of tech enablement will be disrupted by tools like Open AI’s o3 which is already scoring in the top percentile of coding assessments.

Basically, coding is shifting further down the value chain. For coders, that means they will need to add new services to move up or even stay in the same place. While this makes the landscape harder for coders, it's a win for 'noncoders'.

We're entering an age where you don't need to take years to learn coding skills. Instead, you can 'skill up' in under 10 hours and do just about everything a coder could have done years ago.

#2 – Hollywood Quality Movies Made with AI

We shall likely see Hollywood- quality movies created entirely by AI – scripts, visuals, acting, the whole thing. 

It probably won't be from a traditional Hollywood studio because AI is causing their employees very high levels of existential dread. Rather, it might be from the 'creator economy' of YouTubers, who already produce 1–2-hour documentaries. Or it might be from a bunch of kids with a lot of time and curiosity on their hands. With Sora becoming more accessible, they may use that…or the many eventual competitors it's sure to have. Google Veo 2 will likely be one of them. Case in point – the Coca-Cola commercial on YouTube, produced entirely by AI. It got over 300,000 views and shows we are already on the way there. Huge stuff, since Coca-Cola may spend an average of $1 million to create their usual commercials.

At the end of the day, this is already changing assumptions about what it means to be a filmmaker. Great stories will become even more important, while production value (and to some degree acting) may become less important.

#3 – The Rise of AI Agents

AI tools are software apps with AI that perform tasks (under human direction). They are like car's cruise control – it does a specific thing but still requires a decent amount of input and guidance.

AI agents, on the other hand, are sophisticated systems that can operate autonomously – i.e. they have a degree of agency. If we continue the car analogy, then it's more like a self-driving car. You could type or speak a prompt to an AI agent, then it would take control of your mouse and keyboard – opening up applications, typing in spreadsheet, finding stuff online, and more, all to complete whatever 'job' you gave it to do. The stuff that's in beta right now is literal Star Trek stuff and yet, it's not science fiction anymore – it's here and we're going to see a lot more of it.

#4 – AI is Getting Better, Faster, and Cheaper

AI’s price-to-performance ratio keeps improving. By the end of 2025, we’ll see multiple major players (Google, Meta, OpenAI, and Amazon) rolling out models that are not only more powerful but also less expensive to deploy.

Speaking of infrastructure, there's a lot of media fuss about the “cost” of AI computing power. It is a reality – and we shall see datacenters scaling up their solar power and so using cleaner forms of energy. And since recent human history is a story of inventing more powerful forms of energy to power ambitions, I think we shall see more of this as well.

On the software side of things, there are companies like Zapier and Make.com, which you could say were "B-rate" tech companies. Now, AI has leveled up their software and you've got a lot of other no-code workflow builders getting into the game.

#5 – The AI Goldrush Continues without Government Regulation

Governments aren’t going to be able to put meaningful guardrails on AI development. Under Trump, with influence from Musk, we expect deregulation. The US tech influence will make it harder for Europe to regulate AI. While some residents are getting cut off from the latest AI tools (like Sora), it seems unsustainable for Europe to intentionally be an AI Luddite (someone who is aggressively opposed to new technologies or technological change). Europe has repeatedly erred in rushing to codify privacy and AI regulations that make no sense in practice, so one may be skeptical of the EU's ability to lead the world on AI law.

Apparently, there is no future where AI regulation stops companies from doing whatever they want. When you combine this with the extremely high economic incentive to create better language models, then you end up with an all-out race to build more useful stuff.  This may end up with a better outcome for consumers though simultaneously increasing long-term risks – which are mostly about data privacy rather than about robots taking over the world.

Meaningful AI regulation is not in the cards in the US for AI for at least four years, and probably wouldn’t be with Democrats in charge, though they might pay lip service to the idea. So, government won’t provide meaningful guardrails or slowdown. Which means that as long as AI doesn’t turn into aliens invading the world, we’ll probably see lots of cool stuff moving very rapidly.

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, however, it happens unintentionally, I offer my sincere regrets.

Reference:

https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/artificial-intelligence/publications/artificial-intelligence-study.html?ck_subscriber_id=2813475751&utm_source=convertkit&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=5%20AI%20Predictions%20for%202025%20(AI%20hype%20dying;%20real%20opportunities%20rising)%20-%2016269268