As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into our daily lives, industry leaders and experts predict a transformative 2025, marked by significant developments and challenges that will shape industries, revolutionize workflows, and spark meaningful conversations about the implications of AI.

The evolution of AI will have far-reaching consequences, from groundbreaking advancements to existential challenges, and will continue to influence industries, alter workflows, and fuel discussions about its impact.

In this article, AI News spoke with some of the world’s leading minds to gain insight into their visions for the year ahead and explore the future of AI.

Shift towards smaller, purpose-driven models

Grant Shipley, Senior Director of AI at Red Hat, predicts a shift away from valuing AI models based on their size and towards a focus on specific applications, where developers will chain together smaller models to create more efficient and bespoke solutions.

“2025 will mark a significant shift in how we approach AI, focusing on the value of models rather than their size,” Shipley said.

This modular, task-based approach will facilitate more efficient and effective applications tailored to specific needs.

Open-source AI leading the way

Bill Higgins, VP of watsonx Platform Engineering and Open Innovation at IBM, expects open-source AI models to gain popularity in 2025 due to their affordability, transparency, and customization potential.

“Many enterprises struggle to demonstrate measurable returns on their AI investments, and the high licensing fees of proprietary models are a significant factor. Open-source AI solutions will bridge this gap in 2025,” Higgins explained.

Open-source models will offer a way for enterprises to move beyond experimentation and achieve scalability.

Augmenting human expertise

Jonathan Siddharth, CEO of Turing, believes that 2025 will be marked by the development of AI systems that can learn from human expertise at scale, teaching AI to approach problems with logical reasoning.

“This integration of human expertise with AI will be crucial in industries like finance and healthcare, where competitiveness will depend on mastering this integration,” Siddharth said.

Behavioural psychology catching up

Niklas Mortensen, Chief Design Officer at Designit, predicts that understanding the interplay between human behavior and AI systems will become a key focus in 2025, as algorithmic bias leads to unwanted outputs.

“Behavioural psychology will catch up to the AI train, and we will see solutions like ‘pause moments’ for human oversight and intentional balance between automation and human control in critical operations,” Mortensen explained.

Bridging the physical and digital worlds

Andy Wilson, Senior Director at Dropbox, envisions AI becoming an integral part of daily life, offering innovative ways to connect, create, and collaborate, with mobile devices and wearables at the forefront of this transformation.

However, Wilson warns of new questions about the boundaries between personal and workplace data.

Driving sustainability goals

Kendra DeKeyrel, VP ESG & Asset Management at IBM, highlights the role of AI in helping organizations achieve their 2030 sustainability targets, through AI-powered technologies for managing energy consumption, lifecycle performance, and data center strain.

Unlocking computational power and inference

James Ingram, VP Technology at Streetbees, foresees a shift in computational requirements as AI scales to handle increasingly complex problems, with a focus on real-time reasoning capabilities and expanding context windows.

Rise of agentic AI and unified data foundations

Dominic Wellington, Enterprise Architect at SnapLogic, believes that 2025 will mark a more flexible and creative era for AI, with agentic AI requiring robust data integration to thrive.

From hype to reality

Jason Schern, Field CTO of Cognite, predicts that 2025 will be the year when truly transformative, validated generative AI solutions emerge, with domain-specific AI agents revolutionizing industrial workflows.

Deepfakes and crisis of trust

Siggi Stefnisson, Cyber Safety CTO at Gen, warns of the threat posed by sophisticated generative AI to the authenticity of images, videos, and information, and the need for robust digital credentials to verify authenticity.

2025: Foundational shifts in the AI landscape

As multiple predictions converge, it is clear that foundational shifts are on the horizon, with smarter applications, stronger integration with human expertise, closer alignment with sustainability goals, and heightened security, but also significant ethical challenges.

2025 represents a crucial year, marking a transition from the initial excitement of AI proliferation to mature and measured adoption that promises value and a more nuanced understanding of its impact.

See also: AI Action Summit: Leaders call for unity and equitable development

Want to learn more about AI and big data from industry leaders? Check out AI & Big Data Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London, co-located with other leading events including Intelligent Automation Conference, BlockX, Digital Transformation Week, and Cyber Security & Cloud Expo.

Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.