Predictions are funny things. They often seem like a bold gamble, almost like trying to peer into the future with the confidence we inherently lack as humans. Technology’s rapid advancement surprises even the most seasoned experts, especially when it progresses exponentially, as it often does. As physicist Albert A. Bartlett famously said, “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand exponential growth.” His words still ring true today.

But predictions are also powerful. When grounded in knowledge and experience, they help us make informed decisions, guide our investments, and spark innovation. Even when they don’t hit the mark exactly, they provide goalposts – helping us reimagine our field and explore new avenues of growth.

So, here I am once again – with an optimistic, realistic view of AI. Yes, there are challenges. AI can be misused, and its weaponization is a real concern. But this is true of every major innovation, from the wheel to the internet. My predictions are hopeful but grounded in the realities of AI’s opportunities and risks. Looking ahead to 2025, these are my expectations for artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI, and the changes we’ll likely see in the next 12 to 18 months.

Reflecting on 2023 and 2024

If 2023 was generative AI’s “wow!” moment – the time when everyone sat up and paid attention – 2024 has been the season for understanding both the power and limits of the technology. Businesses have been experimenting with generative AI, assessing where it adds real value and beginning to make a real-world impact.

In 2025, organizations will dive even deeper into generative AI usage, with a clearer understanding of what works and what doesn’t. Here are my top predictions for how AI, especially generative AI, will shape the year ahead.

Smarter RegTech: Ethical AI Frameworks and Compliance Automation

By 2025, businesses will make responsible AI usage a priority. Generative AI will become a key player in enforcing ethical standards and maintaining compliance. We’ll see AI tools automatically detecting and mitigating biases, tracking AI usage across different departments, and even generating compliance reports for regulators. The growth of these systems will coincide with the increasing number of new regulations, legislation, and standards that will emerge throughout 2025 and beyond. Agile regulatory technologies will become essential.

Bringing Teams Closer Together: AI-Enhanced Collaboration Tools

Generative AI is poised to transform how large organizations collaborate. Expect new AI-powered tools for virtual meetings, project management, and cross-functional document collaboration. These tools will generate meeting agendas, notes and action items automatically, summarizing key decisions and helping with follow-ups. AI will assist in task prioritization and team coordination, making hybrid and distributed teams more efficient. Coupled with AI-enhanced knowledge discovery tools, these advancements will make working together smoother than ever before.

One to Many: Hyper-Personalization at Scale

Generative AI will revolutionize how businesses engage with customers by offering hyper-personalized experiences. From products and services to marketing strategies, AI will use real-time data from various touchpoints – website activity, purchase history, social media engagement – to create individualized content and recommendations. This personalized approach will boost customer loyalty and retention by creating an unprecedented customer experience.

My Robot Colleague: Agentic AI Co-Workers

“Agentic AI” refers to AI systems that can act autonomously, pursuing specific goals while interacting with people and other systems to complete complex tasks. Unlike today’s AI tools, which mostly generate content or make suggestions, agentic AI will actively execute decisions, manage workflows and collaborate in real-time with human teams. We are on the cusp of working alongside AI colleagues who can take action and provide insights.

Search That Learns: Adaptive AI-Powered Search

Generative AI will change how we search for information within organizations, making it more adaptive, context-aware, and intelligent. Unlike traditional keyword-based searches, adaptive AI-powered search will understand the user’s intent, interpret ambiguous queries, and deliver more personalized results – taking into account the user’s role, preferences, and behavior. Add to that RAG-based generative AI search, which continuously learns from user interactions, and you get smarter, more informed, more accurate responses over time. Ultimately, this means a better AI that grows in capability the more it’s used.

What About the Rest?

These are some of the ways I see AI, especially GenAI, being used in businesses and organizations around the globe. In reality, though, use cases that provide real-world value to organizations either through cost-savings or new ways to monetize their products and services. What is clear is that whatever the use case, providing clean, connected, contextualized data to your AI – in a governed and secure fashion – will be critical. Providing your business with an architecture that can support rapid changes, provide fluid data environments, and power multiple use cases will be key.

Beyond 2025: Continuous Evolution

Beyond these trends, 2025 will see new models, new ways of harnessing AI, and new aspects of the technology being discovered by businesses and academic institutions. This evolution will demand changes within organizations. Companies that don’t invest in AI – that don’t adapt and innovate – will eventually have to pay a higher price to catch up or risk being replaced by AI-native competitors.

The Age of AI Collaboration

No matter what happens next year, one thing is certain: we’re moving out of the information age into a new epoch – an age where humans and AI co-exist. We might even be on the brink of creating a new form of intelligence – one not born of natural evolution but built by us, unfamiliar to its creators. It’s an exciting, transformative, and perhaps slightly unnerving prospect. But it’s also an opportunity to shape a future where AI augments human potential in ways we’re only beginning to understand.