Tech That Will Change Your Life in 2025
Weather forecasts will get smarter, EVs could get pricier, crypto will be for everyday investors and AI will be everywhere
Reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2024 / Illustrations by Jason Schneider for WSJ
Every December for the past decade, we’ve put on our futuristic glasses to predict the year ahead in tech. Looking back, we’ve gotten a lot right—and, OK, a few things wrong. Come on, who didn’t think Harry Potter’s augmented-reality adventure would be a smash hit?
But trust us: This year our predictions are more on-point than ever. In 2025, big loose ends will be tied up, including TikTok’s legal troubles and electric vehicles’ federal subsidies. Long-awaited promises will be fulfilled, like self-driving Ubers, cleaner-energy data centers and crypto for everyday investors. And, of course, artificial intelligence: AI agents, AI weather forecasters, AI…everything.
As for us humans, if our longevity-tech predictions pan out, we’ll be making these annual forecasts for another 80 years.
Agent Provocateur
Every big (and small) tech company will hype up the promise of AI “agents” this coming year. So far, generative AI has mostly been about creating text, images and videos. But in the next evolution, AI systems don’t just create—they do.
Agents will understand context, learn your preferences and interact with you and other software to get stuff done: booking travel, ordering food, shopping for those new sneakers.
“Our devices are making us work way too hard to get things done,” said David Singleton, co-founder and chief executive of /dev/agents, a company building an agent operating system. Singleton said his platform, launching in 2025, aims to remove the friction from tasks we repeat 10 to 20 times a day.
Google already declared its new Gemini 2.0 the “model for the agentic era”—yes, they said “agentic”—and has shown how its AI agents can buy plane tickets and other stuff. Anthropic recently began testing a “computer use” feature where you can direct its Claude model to search the web, open applications and input text using a mouse and keyboard. And, no surprise, OpenAI is reportedly launching its own AI agent platform in early 2025.
Supercharged AI gadgets!
For years, our annual exercise has included lots of predictions about exciting new developments in smartphones—and fail—is now in AI-supercharged gadgets.
Apple is set to release a six-inch smart-home display, according to reports from Bloomberg. Think an iPad for your kitchen or living room wall with a big emphasis on Siri and Apple Intelligence—areas where we’re looking for big improvements. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
Then Amazon’s Alexa is finally getting its long-promised generative-AI upgrade. Along with it, we expect to see smarter Echo speakers and deeper, more seamless interaction with the long-running voice assistant.
AI will also venture out from the home. “Next year is a big year for Meta glasses,” Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted in response to our recent report that the Facebook parent will release Ray-Ban smart glasses with a small display.
And then there’s the wild card: Former Apple design legend Jony Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are reportedly collaborating on an AI device. It’s unclear if that will be out before the 2026 ball drops.
Countdown to a TikTok ban?
TikTok faces a U.S. ban by Jan. 19 if it doesn’t shed its Chinese ownership. Will the popular social-video platform continue to exist in this country? Possibly—but how is the question.
There are a few paths: The first is the Supreme Court. The justices will decide the constitutionality of the law that banned the platform. Does it violate the First Amendment? The court scheduled fast-track oral arguments for Jan. 10.
Another option: the Trump administration. If the court doesn’t delay or derail the ban, which takes effect on the eve of the inauguration, the second-term president could help.
While he can’t unilaterally wipe away an act of Congress, the law does allow the president to lift the ban if his administration determines the site is no longer under Chinese control. TikTok has hinted in legal filings that it’s hoping for executive action to block the ban or soften its impact.
Finally, ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, could decide to sell the app outright. It has said it won’t. But if things change, billionaire Frank McCourt is ready to buy; he says he’s expecting over $20 billion in capital for what he’s calling “The People’s Bid.” The clock is…well, you know.
Improved Weather Apps
It doesn’t take a meteorology degree to know weather apps are often wrong. Extreme, unprecedented weather events are difficult to determine ahead of time—and can be deadly.
Enter GenCast, a new model from Google’s DeepMind artificial-intelligence lab that can provide accurate forecasts up to 15 days in advance, a leap beyond current predictions. The public will be able to see real-time forecasts from the model within the first few weeks of 2025, says a company spokesman.
A typical 10-day forecast is accurate only about half of the time, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Google says its machine-learning-based weather model produced forecasts that were 97.2% better than a widely used European model.
It’s also faster: Supercomputers that crunch the numbers for traditional models can take hours to create a forecast. GenCast can generate a prediction in eight minutes.
Google isn’t the only one making advancements. Due in part to new models and better data capturing, NOAA made its most accurate hurricane-season predictions ever in 2024.
Cleaner Power
The AI and cloud-computing booms mean more data centers all over the U.S. They demand power and can drive up local electricity rates, stress out residentswith noise, and pollute the air by tapping fossil fuels. Some tech giants are trying to figure out how to be better neighbors. If they come to your town in the next year or two, they might even bring cleaner sources of energy.
Amazon, Google and Microsoft are investing billions in nuclear power. Microsoft recently signed a deal with Constellation Energy for power from the undamaged reactor at Three Mile Island, site of the nation’s worst nuclear accident. In early 2024, Amazon negotiated a power deal with a plant in Pennsylvania.
The companies are also looking into so-called small modular reactors, mini plants akin to the ones on nuclear-powered submarines. Amazon’s head of cloud computing said that’s a more distant goal, coming to maturity over the next decade—if they work at all. Meanwhile, other nonfossil approaches will likely fill the gap. Adding really big batteries to solar and wind plants can be a cheaper way to collect and store power, so those same big cloud providers are also investing here. And we’ll also see more exotic approaches: Google is already drawing power from a geothermal plant. And U.K. company Drax is hoping to build a power plant in America’s pine belt that will be fueled by burning wood chips, with emissions pumped underground.
Crypto Boom 2.0
Bitcoin just keeps setting new records, having shot through the $100,000 barrier in early December. There are many reasons to believe it could go a lot higher than that—and a lot lower. For those with an appetite for risk, particularly America’s young men, that’s apparently a feature, not a bug.
With the debut of bitcoin ETFs, it’s now easier to buy a ticket to ride the roller-coaster. Wall Street and big banks are cashing in, with former crypto skeptics now running giant funds themselves, such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. The market will be fueled by a crypto-friendly incoming administration, possible new ETFs for smaller and riskier crypto tokens, and changes at the Securities and Exchange Commission, crypto’s archnemesis. These shifts may mean more millionaires will be minted, but it doesn’t guarantee safety for unwary investors.
“Bitcoin in particular is becoming more of a ‘normal’ part of a risk-on portfolio for investors,” says Grant Engelbart, an investment adviser at financial-advisory firm Carson Group. However, he cautions, the next time there’s a winter in crypto, enthusiasm could wane.
EV Sales Could Slump
The incoming administration is planning to deliver a powerful one-two punch to electric-vehicle sales in the U.S.
First, there’s the long-promised rollback of federal subsidies for EVs. It’s something Trump adviser and Tesla boss Elon Musk supports, though it could negatively affect sales of his EVs.
The knockout blow could come in the form of steep tariffs on goods from China and elsewhere—specifically all imported battery materials. Some startups working on building domestic supply chains for batteries have said that tariffs could protect and expand U.S. battery production.
“We’re trying to make sure policymakers—no matter what administration or party they’re part of—understand the real opportunity in domestic battery manufacturing,” says Cameron Dales, co-founder of Peak Energy, a Denver battery startup. “If we get some of these policies wrong, we could smother a burgeoning opportunity before it gets a chance to get going.”
Here’s where the crystal ball gets cloudy: Will the Trump administration allow carve-outs for domestic carmakers importing battery materials? Will EV makers respond to the loss of a tax credit by lowering prices—and would that benefit established players while hurting startups? And finally, would Republican lawmakers benefiting from subsidized investments—such as Georgia’s Hyundai EV factory—vote to abolish such subsidies?
Health tracking = longevity tracking
People want to increase their lifespan, but they also want to increase their “healthspan”—how long they remain healthy—and keep their “biological age” young. You may be 55, but thanks to a healthy diet and regular workout regimen, you could physiologically resemble a typical 45-year-old.
Now, there are apps that reveal how you are aging. In the new year, the Death Clock app’s age progression tool will produce two images: what you’ll look at 70 living with good habit—and with bad habits.
FaceAge, developed by Mass General Brigham researchers, can analyze a person’s selfie to determine biological age. One goal is to identify whether a cancer patient is healthy enough to endure treatment and will live long enough to benefit from it. The researchers are developing the algorithm to analyze diabetic or orthopedic patients, too.
Another longevity trend is monitoring glucose to identify blood-sugar spikes. When repeated and prolonged, these have been linked to higher risk for heart disease and diabetes. January, an app that will be showcased at the upcoming CES tech show, uses AI to analyze photos of what you eat to predict your blood sugar—no hardware required.
If you aren’t afraid of needles, continuous glucose monitors are more accurate. DexCom’s Stelo is using AI to connect blood-sugar spikes with sleep, diet and other lifestyle habits.
Taxi, Drive Thyself
OK, maybe we said 2017 was the year you’d ride in a self-driving car. This time, we mean it. Pinkie promise. Starting in early 2025, you’ll be able to hail a fully autonomous Waymo via the Uber app in Atlanta and Austin, Texas. The service, from Google parent Alphabet, is even going international, with plans to launch in Tokyo.
This is on top of the 150,000 trips a week Waymo is already providing in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Austin. In those cities, the autonomous vehicles might even start hitting freeways.
Meanwhile, General Motors’ Cruise is officially out of the robotaxi race, but Amazon’s Zoox is still very much in. Next year the company will begin offering rides to the public in Las Vegas, followed by San Francisco. The company also recently began testing in Austin and Miami.
And then there’s Tesla. Musk has promised a fully autonomous version of its “Full Self-Driving” software for the Model 3 and Model Y deployed in Texas and California this coming year. That could mean no more human drivers on standby like the system has now. The car would be in full control, for better or for worse. The futuristic Cybercab—no steering wheel, no pedals—isn’t expected until 2026 or 2027. However, Musk himself said at the unveiling that he tends “to be optimistic with time frames.”
By Joanna Stern, Christopher Mims and Nicole Nguyen
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