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MartechFuture of work
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Content
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5 min
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Key Trends in AI (2025+)
Trend | What’s happening now | What’s next / risks | Why you should care |
Agentic AI & Autonomous Agents | AI agents that can chain tasks, act across apps, make decisions. Microsoft, Bain, McKinsey all flag this as central. | Agents will become platforms (agents building agents). Risk: misalignment, errant behavior, over-automation (losing control). | Your product might not just embed generative models but full agentic features (workflow automation, orchestration). |
Synthetic Data & Training Pipelines | Use generative models to create data for training, evaluation, augmentation. | Synthetic data will become “core” in domains with privacy or scarcity constraints. Risk: synthetic bias, validation overhead. | Reduces data acquisition cost; opens new ML domains. But you’ll need tooling to verify fidelity. |
Model & Inference Efficiency / Hardware Innovation | AI Index 2025 adds focus on hardware and inference costs. | Specialized chips (beyond GPUs), dynamic models (pruning, adaptivity), edge inference. Risk: supply chain, model fragmentation. | Your UX/real-time features depend on latency and cost. If you’re streaming or live features, this matters. |
Regulation, Governance, Safety | AI Safety Summit → Paris AI Action Summit in 2025. First International AI Safety Report. EU’s AI Act (rolling in). | Expect “high risk” rules, transparency mandates, audits, liability frameworks. Risk: compliance burden, slow innovation. | Any product with generation, decisioning, or personal data must embed guardrails now. Don’t retro-engineer compliance. |
Hybrid / Compositional Generation | Moving away from “text → image” toward pipelines combining text, video, 3D, action. | Entire virtual worlds, real-time reactivity, crossmodal “imagination.” | If you build templates, clips, content features (as you discussed with Restream), this is the evolution. |
Human+AI Collaboration, Interface Shifts | As you and your contact noted: prompt quality matters. AI being a mirror. “Prompt base” interfaces vs click UIs. | Interfaces evolve: voice, gestures, implicit interaction, “explain me what you want” style. Risk: input ambiguity, over-automation. | The user’s ability to express their desires (weak prompt) is a bottleneck. Invest in prompt UX. |
Economic & Power Shifts | Concentration of gains in big tech. Infrastructure arms race. Energy demands rising. | Infrastructure becomes strategic (gigafactories, data centres). Smaller players may struggle to compete unless niche or integrated. | As a product team, you’ll need infrastructure strategy: cloud vs custom, cost vs differentiation. |
Job Displacement & Reskilling | Widespread anxiety about jobs. Routine design, code, content tasks will be swept. | New roles: AI “system designers,” prompt architects, safety engineers. Risk: social backlash, regulation. | Your hiring, org structure, role definitions will need to adapt. Stop assuming “designer = static visuals.” |