Technology to be careful of in 2025

Even AI can't predict the future (yet), yet two of our tech editors took a look ahead at what they think will be big in 2025.

As 2022 comes to a close, the outlook is bleak for the cryptocurrency business.

One of the best known companies, FTX, Collapsed by $8bn (£6.3bn) Of clients' money missing.

In March of 2024, company co-founder Sam Bankman Fried He received a 25-year prison sentence On charges of defrauding customers and investors.

The scandal shook confidence in the entire sector.

It appears that cryptocurrencies will remain a niche product, with an enthusiastic but relatively limited following.

But just a few months later, the industry was buzzing with optimism again. Behind the enthusiasm – Donald Trump's success in the presidential election on November 5.

The feeling was that it would be more favorable to the cryptocurrency sector, and that seems to be the case so far.

In early December, Trump said he would nominate Former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Paul Atkins has been named as the Wall Street regulator's top boss.

Atkins is seen as much more pro-crypto than the outgoing president, Gary Gensler.

This announcement helped the value of one Bitcoin, the largest of many cryptocurrencies, rise to $100,000.

“With Trump winning, you can imagine that in 2025 you will get proactive regulation,” says Jeffrey Kendrick, global head of digital assets research at Harvard University. “Some of the passive regulation will be removed, which will then allow banks and other institutions to enter the space.” Standard Chartered.

In particular, Kendrick points to guidance issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission It is called Saab 121. Since it came into force in 2022, it has become more difficult for banks and other financial companies to provide cryptocurrency services.

Such a move could help Trump fulfill his July promise to make the United States the power The cryptocurrency capital of the world.

If he makes good on that pledge, it will be a marked shift from 2021 when he became Trump Describing Bitcoin as a 'scam'.

As AI tools move to our phones — Apple, Google, and Samsung have all launched services that can edit photos, translate languages, and perform web searches — we are at the beginning of an era in which AI becomes an integral part of our digital lives and increasingly useful on a personal level.

This is if we allow it, because it requires a little faith.

Let's take diary management as an example. An AI tool can manage your diary efficiently, if you allow it to access it. But how far should this go?

To be truly helpful, does that mean she also needs to know who she prefers to avoid meeting, or what relationships she wants to keep secret, and from whom?

Do you want it to provide you with summaries of counseling sessions or medical appointments?

It's very personal information, and it would likely be very embarrassing and very valuable if there was a glitch that led to it being shared. Would you trust big tech companies with this kind of data?

Microsoft is pushing hard on this particular front. It ran into trouble in 2024 for the demo of a tool called Recall, which takes snapshots of desktop laptops every few seconds, to help users locate content they've seen but can't remember where.

It has now made a number of changes to the product – which never launched – but is sticking by it.

“I think we're moving into a whole new era where there will be very present, persistent and capable fellow pilots in your daily life,” the company's head of AI, Mustafa Suleiman, told me recently.

Despite the challenges, Ben Wood, senior analyst at technology research firm CCS Insight, expects more personalized AI services to emerge in 2025.

“Output will be continuously updated by drawing on evolving data sources, such as emails, messages, documents and social media interactions.

“This will allow the AI ​​service to be specifically tuned to match a person’s communication style, needs and preferences,” he says.

But Mr Wood accepts that letting AI control your personal information would be a big step.

“Trust will be essential,” says Wood.

The more money flows into AI, the more data centers need to be built.

Training and running AI requires a lot of computing power, and works best with the latest computer chips and servers.

Over the next five years, up to $1 trillion could be invested in data centers by the largest data users, including Google, Microsoft and Meta. According to CCS Insight.

In Europe alone, between 2024 and 2028, data center capacity is expected to grow at a rate of 9% per year, according to real estate services company Savills.

But these new facilities are unlikely to be built in existing data centers such as London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.

Property prices in those cities are high – Savills says London land prices could be as well As much as 17 million pounds per acre – In addition, the lack of electricity supply means that developers will look elsewhere.

And UK cities such as Cambridge, Manchester and Birmingham could be home to the next wave of data center construction.

Elsewhere, Europe is likely to be considered, such as Prague, Genoa, Munich, Düsseldorf and Milan.

At the heart of some of these new data centers will be the latest computer chip from Nvidia, the company that dominates the market for chips used in artificial intelligence.

It was unveiled in March 2024The Blackwell chip is expected to begin shipping in large numbers in 2025.

The new chip should allow technology companies to train AI four times faster, and see AI running 30 times faster than current computer chips, according to Vivek Arya, senior semiconductor analyst at Bank of America Securities.

Nvidia's biggest customers, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Coreweave, will likely get the technology first. According to reports.

But other customers may find it difficult to get their hands on the superior chips, with “limited supply in 2025,” according to Arya.