As OpenAI and Google joust this December, with the former’s 12 Days of Innovation challenge, and the latter countering it with its Gemini 2 AI model, I look beyond these skirmishes to predict my Twelve Trends for AI going into 2025 and beyond.
I will describe them over three columns. Each of these has a theme, and today’s four predictions are around how humans and AI will draw closer to each other—in work, life and relationships.
Prediction One of Twelve—English is the new coding: As our generation was growing up, we were told that learning English was the passport to success. We did that and were arguably successful in our careers and businesses. Our children in turn are told that learning how to code is the passport to success, thus coding is the new English.
This led to 10-year-olds being dragged to code camps to learn Python and JavaScript. With Generative AI, this changes: Every time we write an English prompt for ChatGPT or any of its ilk, we are actually ‘coding: i.e., giving it a set of instructions to perform some task for us, whether it’s a summarization, video-creation or a write-up.
Except that now we are doing it in our natural human language rather than the language of the machine. This is profound, as it has the potential to democratize coding and make eight billion of us code. Microsoft’s Satya Nadella declaimed that instead of learning the machine’s language, machines would have to learn ours.
Jensen Huang of Nvidia joined the chorus saying that the true potential of AI is that none of us would have to learn how to code. Thus, English, or any other natural language, becomes the new coding language.
Prediction Two of Twelve—AI is the new UI: AI will become the new user interface. Bill Gates presciently wrote in November 2023 (bit.ly/3tSMNkB): “…you won’t have to use different apps for different tasks. You’ll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do.”
A UI has been how humans and machines have interacted with each other, as the difficult UIs of machine language and DOS (disk operating system) gave way to a GUI (graphical user interface), search bars, browsers and apps. Simpler UI led to a faster, intuitive and more productive interaction with a machine.
The AI-driven shift will lead to voice UI as the spoken word becomes the new way to interact with machines, similar to our interactions with other humans. We will chat with ChatGPT or Gemini to work with them on our day-to-day tasks.
Our devices will morph, with voice becoming the primary interface rather than a large screen. The first proto-devices are already out, though not terribly successful, like the Rabbit R1 and AI Pin. An AI assistant becomes the UI.
Prediction Three of Twelve—AI and humans are the new creators: GenAI is a cognitive technology and can do creative tasks like writing, creating art and composing poetry. This has left many human creators deeply worried about their jobs as creativity was supposed to be a uniquely human skill. I believe, however, that Generative AI will boost human creativity.
Take OpenAI’s Sora, for instance, released last week. When Sam Altman had teased it a year back, he had invited creative prompts on X to instantly generate videos with it. Indian entrepreneur Kunal Shah famously gave ‘A bicycle race on ocean with different animals as athletes riding the bicycles with drone camera view’ and Sora produced a spectacular video (bit.ly/3ZgGnHD).
However, it was not Sora that was being creative, but Kunal, who would not have imagined a creation like this unless he had a tool like Sora or Runway to manifest his innate human creativity. Thus, I believe that a combination of humans and AI will give rise to a new era of creativity.
Prediction Four of Twelve—AI creates a new customer: The Industrial revolution brought with it the transactional Industrial customer who rarely used technology, and the internet brought the digital comparison-driven and social customer who searched and clicked her way through brands.
A new kind of customer will emerge in this age of AI—someone who lives in the era of infinite hyper-personalized choice and has immersive and conversational interaction with brands, AI that anticipates her needs and brand relationships that are collaborative rather than functional or emotional (bit.ly/4ffrueN).
This will mean a big change in business and marketing as they adjust to this reality.
The next set of predictions will be around what I consider the biggest trend of 2025—Agentic AI. Here is a video (bit.ly/4fnaJ1h) that offers more.
#expect #trends #lead
