Top 5 AI Trends To Watch In 2025

From agentic systems to humanoids, AI is everywhere. But ethical concerns remain over its growing role

- Leslie D'Monte

Notwithstanding some of last year's tech disappointments, including the metaverse and Generative AI (GenAI), which fell short on scalability and returns, tech innovation continues at a scorching pace. GenAI is revolutionizing content creation, while artificial intelligence (AI) agentic systems are advancing autonomous decision-making, reigniting debates around artificial general intelligence (AGI) and its ethical implications. AI-powered humanoids are entering the retail, healthcare, and manufacturing industries, among others, even as AI-driven cyberattacks persist, underscoring the urgent need for stronger safeguards. We take a closer look at each of these trends.

1. Smarter AI Models Will Intensify AGI Fears

Data has three apples and buys five more. How many does she have now?" Even a 5-year-old can answer eight. Similarly, GenAI models solve this using 'chain of thought' reasoning: "Lata starts with three apples. She buys five more, so 3+5=8."

AI can also tackle complex puzzles by employing human-like 'recursive thinking', which breaks problems into smaller steps to solve them logically.

Does this mean AI can think and reason like humans? Opinions differ sharply. Prominent voices such as Elon Musk, Masayoshi Son, Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio predict machines will soon surpass human thinking, ushering in artificial general intelligence (AGI). Conversely, experts Yann LeCun, Fei-Fei Li, and Andrew Ng argue that AI is far from sentient.

Proponents highlight AI's benefits such as its contributions to areas like driverless cars, satellite technology, chatbots, and disaster forecasting. Critics warn of risks such as hallucinations, deepfakes, plagiarism, job loss, and the hypothetical threat of AGI surpassing human intelligence.