What crazy new tech blew you away in 2024? Like me, you are probably struggling to name anything in a year of seemingly incremental change in artificial intelligence, robotics, apps and most other categories of technology. But behind the scenes, big moves are afoot that will reshape how technology evolves in 2025.
The rise of AI agents
You’ve probably encountered an AI chatbot by now. It may have directed you to the right section of your bank’s website for more information, or suggested appropriate phone plans on offer from your mobile provider.
That’s fairly basic stuff. The next phase involves agentic AI – intelligent bots that are programmed to undertake tasks on your behalf. If you buy a sweater online and find it too small, an AI agent will organise the courier collection and replacement of it without a human customer service representative in the loop.
Microsoft and the likes of customer relationship software maker Salesforce have already built AI agents. In 2025, we will see them infiltrate the business world. Eventually, you will have your own agent, which will manage your calendar and make decisions on your behalf, chatting with other AI agents to save you the low-level admin of life.
Tech goes nuclear
The demanding computing requirements for AI are behind plans by nuclear startups and their Big Tech backers to kickstart production of small modular reactors (SMRs). These reactors are smaller, safer, more efficient and quicker to deploy, and capacity can be scaled up as needed. Google has partnered with nuclear startup Kairos Power to buy power from a fleet of reactors that will supply up to 500 megawatts of electricity by 2035. Amazon and Microsoft are making similar nuclear energy deals.
They all want a more reliable energy supply for their vast data centres than wind and solar farms can offer.
Fusion – the real holy grail of energy production that replicates the reactions that power the sun but doesn’t have the nuclear-meltdown risk associated with nuclear fission reactors like Fukushima and Chernobyl – is attracting more investment cash than ever before.
Wellington-based Open Star is in the race to build a small fusion reactor for clean energy production. Our nuclear-free status will likely prevent fission SMRs from being developed here, but the AI tools we use will eventually be powered by nuclear energy generated in California.
All hail the robotaxi
The most remarkable experience I had in 2024 was the Waymo driverless car rides I took around San Francisco. Sitting in the back of a Jaguar iPace as it drove me home from a bar at 1am, the driver’s seat empty, did actually blow my mind.
Waymo, a Google offshoot, is now safely making more than 100,000 driverless car trips a week in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix. GM-owned Cruise has resumed driverless car testing after an incident in which a pedestrian hit by another car was dragged along by a Cruise vehicle. Elon Musk in October unveiled Tesla’s Cybercab, a Waymo rival that doesn’t even have a driver’s seat, let alone a steering wheel. Tesla also plans to bring autonomous “robotaxis” to California and Texas next year using its Model 3 and Model Y cars.
Robotaxis are increasingly common in China’s big cities and Kiwi entrepreneur Alex Kendall, who raised US$1 billion for his autonomous vehicle company Wayve in May, is trialling driverless cars in the UK. Tech that has been in development for more than a decade is now ferrying people around, though driverless cars are at least five years away from taking to New Zealand streets.
