A few things I expect to see in 2025…

Some forecasts for new technologies and shifts in how we live and work for the year ahead, alongside a few implications...

In between holiday travels here, sharing a few things I expect to see in 2025…

(1) A new wave of investigative journalists will break news via betting markets. We learned in the election that betting markets are, in most cases, more accurate than professional polling and news reports of voting trends. While there seems to be no disincentive for spreading false information these days on social media, people act differently when money is on the line. Making a wild claim? Put money on it. Don’t think vaccines work, make the claim alongside a bet and we’ll see how you fare! The general population may benefit from bottom-line-driven fact checking and the use of betting markets to suss out the truth of what is really happening. New mechanics for reconciling the veracity of news (mutually agreed upon objective measures, etc) will emerge when money is on the line. I think we’ll see a new cohort of investigative journalists and researchers become wealthy news sleuths by sourcing proprietary insights and breaking the news via betting markets as opposed to mainstream news outlets that are funded via advertising/clicks. Further thoughts here.

(2) DIY software will revolutionize apps for consumers AND the enterprise. There has been much discussion of AI code reviews, GitHub co-pilot, and no-code application builders for the enterprise, but what are the implications of agent-assisted software development for consumers? Quick apps for your home or family were too hard to build until now. I think we’ll see some pretty remarkable and super niche software applications emerge in 2025, by and for consumers. And in the enterprise, the cost calculation of building your own internal tools will start to merit AI-made homegrown solutions to workflows and enterprise functions (and increasingly agents will replace these functions, per the last forecast on the list!) as opposed to the usual “find a SaaS product to solve every need.” Explored this further here.

(3) Augmented reality (AR) will continue to evolve on a slow boil in 2025, but will transform our lives as we know it within three years. Recent discussions of the impact of AR remind me of discussions about the impact of AI in 2016 - everyone knew it would be transformative, but couldn’t declare exactly how or when. Behind the scenes, the key pillars for AR to change the world are getting stronger - the devices are getting lighter (META’s Orion device is 96 grams), the 3D creation software is becoming both more powerful and more accessible (e.g. Adobe’s Project Neo, etc), the resolution of immersive experiences is getting better, and the role AI will play powering a new contextual operating system for AR is becoming increasingly clear. In 2025, we’ll see these fundamental pillars strengthen and more prototype devices emerge.

(4) Top AI talent will start shifting from working in the companies pioneering the latest and greatest AI to taking leadership roles in the industries that will benefit most from AI. Remember when most internet pioneers worked at Netscape, Prodigy, AOL, etc…until every company was, more or less, reimagined in the age of the internet? As LLMs and other generative AI models become increasingly open source and generally commoditized, the accrual of value will shift from those who make the AI to those who can make the most use of it. Certain industries where imagination and risk-taking can be most unleashed by AI will start to be reimagined by the top talent that can best apply these learnings and capabilities. Top of the list? Storytelling and filmmaking, privately owned hospitals, any customer-service intensive business, and every private-equity owned company (for which the “refactoring and re-imagination” playbook can be deployed top-down for massive ROI).

(5) We’ll see a new wave of small businesses emerge that use an AI-native tech stack to refactor their operations. Some of them will be small teams and large businesses, and others will be more artisanal yet (finally) economically viable. Indeed, 2025 will usher in an era of scaling a business’s reach and aspirations without growing headcount and expenses proportionately. But we may be surprised by the highly niche and crafted nature of these new businesses. Why? As every big company floods the zone of our attention with increasingly enticing marketing and cheaper and more personalized versions of everything, we — as consumers — will crave more scarce and authentically human experiences, often provided by a small business run by passionate people. In response, more artisanal-like and privately-owned businesses that may have been uneconomical to run before will start to emerge, powered and made economical by AI-driven tech stacks. Their products and their vision will be intensely personal, but the mechanics of their billing, marketing, etc. will be machine-driven. This trend should spawn massive growth in small businesses and address growing consumer demand for smaller scale and human-crafted version of everything. Discussed this more here.

(6) The rise of new "cognico" companies, designed to optimize compute-driven cognition as opposed to human productivity and reasoning. Cognicos will have data and compute at the center, with humans playing the unique role of stewards and orchestration designers and engineers as nodes. Until now, humans have been the reasoning layer of every organization. The next-gen company will be run by a combination of inference engines (real-time computational reasoning running every function and driving actions across the business), leveraging a variety of pre-trained AI models and a large amount of deep and proprietary data at the center of the company. This core of data, models, and computational reasoning will all be surrounded by “nodes" – the modern version of every “function” of a company from HR to product to sales - which, together, compose the logic layer that performs every process and operation of an organization. Perhaps some of these cognicos will also be decentralized, governed by DAOs (of people), and operated primarily by the cognition-driven stack? Old companies were designed to help people work efficiently together. New companies will be designed for cognition - the way a brain works. Here's a quick sketch of the way i've been thinking about this future construct of a cognition-driven company:

No doubt, 2025 will be another year for the record books.

Let's commit to playing with new technology to find its applications (remember, novelty precedes utility). Let's double-down on what makes us human - our empathy, our own stories and taste, our ingenuity, and our desire to explore different paths and attempt entirely new approaches to old problems. Let's keep sharing our ideas liberally to enrich collective thought. And let's be grateful that we get to live through another platform shift and moment of acceleration, and mindful of the responsibilities to keep asking the tough questions and being creative about what can go right AND what can go wrong.

Thanks for following along this year, and for all the feedback and dot-connecting along the way. Happy new year. -scott