Will 2025 bring new solutions to familiar challenges?

The desire to solve problems is ingrained in human nature. But we know that our solutions often create new problems. It’s a cycle that will likely never end.

So if you want to know what’s coming in 2025, the short answer is nothing we didn’t already know. Important trends will include, of course, more AI spreading from cloud to edge, as well as developments in commercial space exploration and sustainable technologies. Each of these presents exciting opportunities while also being the subject of dire warnings if things were to go wrong.

Elon Musk recently suggested that the chances of AI turning out badly are about 10-20%. That sounds alarmingly high. Without delving more deeply into his comment, a logical, if slightly facetious, response is that the chances of AI working in our favor must then be 80-90%. That sounds more encouraging. In practice, however, we must be prepared for good and bad outcomes. Legislation is beginning to arrive as technology acts proposed in the US and Europe put forward restrictions on the use of the AI, including prohibiting undesirable practices like deception, social scoring, biometric categorization and untargeted facial recognition.

It may already be too late to hold back the coming changes. It’s a fact that AI has quickly become deeply infused into our lives and has fundamentally reshaped our interactions with technology. Our expectations have risen considerably as products and services have become smarter, faster and more intuitive with AI. We now expect personalized recommendations in entertainment and shopping, AI-powered assistance with domestic tasks, accurately curated content on our social media platforms, intelligent tools to enhance our productivity at work and many more. These AI-powered innovations that support our digital lives are now accepted as the norm and, in some ways, even taken for granted.

Among the tools redefining our expectations, AI PCs enhance creative and professional tasks by automating repetitive processes, accelerating data analysis and providing AI-driven content creation. They also benefit from adaptive features that intelligently allocate system resources and improve battery life. Shipments are rising sharply and are predicted to increase from just over 20 million in 2023 to exceed 100 million units in 2025 as more users embrace AI-powered tools and AI is no longer seen as a luxury but a standard feature in modern technology. These machines, defined by the addition of a neural processing unit (NPU) alongside the typical combination of CPU and graphics processor, are expected to account for 43% of all PC shipments in 2025 and dominate by 2026.

Demand for neural processing accelerators will profoundly affect the semiconductor industry, which is predicted to bounce back from declining sales in 2023 to achieve double-digit growth in 2025. We will see the effects of this in the PCB industry, too, as demand for IC substrates rises to become a significant proportion of the overall market. Among the stringent technical demands of this sector, the substrates are typically extremely thin, often down to as few as 10 microns. This is equivalent to only two filaments of ordinary glass fiber. Right now, however, only a tiny percentage of IC substrate manufacturing, and IC packaging in general, happens outside of Asia. This shows there is still much work to be done if the West is to significantly increase its indigenous chip-making capability and establish the resilient and sustainable supply chains that are one objective of the US Chips Act and comparable European legislation.

With the coming change of administration in the US, tariffs may become the main tool discouraging overseas sourcing of chip-packaging components and services. On the other hand, the entire packaging value chain is fundamentally globalized, and this may continue to be the most cost-effective option compared to starting up domestic production from today’s almost non-existent base.

Alongside AI, the commercialization of space is similarly contentious but unstoppable, given the benefits available and the sheer fascination associated with such unfamiliar and unquantified opportunities. Among these, direct satellite-to-cellular communication services are about to begin and can help extend connectivity into remote locations that have not yet been reached by conventional terrestrial cellular networks.

Moreover, we could soon be mining asteroids for scarce minerals, using autonomous, space-roving refineries that capture and process ores remotely before sending them back to Earth. And humans’ return to the moon – currently being bankrolled and promoted by well-known tech billionaires – is expected to grow what we now know as the cislunar economy, encompassing activities like resource extraction, infrastructure development, scientific research and even space tourism. Ultimately, these could provide the starting point to seek economic growth and project human life even further beyond Earth.

As far as the development and adoption of sustainable technologies is concerned, almost all organizations harbor objectives in this area right now, and the drive to establish more sustainable practices will continue. Investors and ethical consumers demand it, and it is vital that we continue seeking new techniques that enable us to use less energy and reduce the consumption of materials such as rare minerals to produce the things we need. The world has finite resources to share between its large and still-growing population, and this challenge will likely become tougher.

Electrification, as a supporting principle of the drive for sustainability, is founded on the assumption that we can generate enough electricity from renewable sources to meet our needs. Although we have made great progress in renewable energy – in technical terms like improving PV-cell efficiency, as well as rapidly growing the installed generating capacity – electrification will not be the only answer to the challenges we face.

We must continue to be inventive and solve problems – those we inherited and those we will inevitably create ourselves as we seek to improve our lives and protect the planet. We can only keep trying to find our way forward, through 2025 and beyond.

We can anticipate an effective technological solution. It’s what engineers do. On the other hand, we may need to consider changing our always-on, energy-hungry lifestyles to ensure reliable, sustainable access to services we all need.

Alun Morgan is technology ambassador at Ventec International Group (venteclaminates.com); alun.morgan@ventec-europe.com. His column runs monthly.

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