Microsoft has made six key predictions for the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in 2025, including that AI models will become more powerful and useful, AI Agents will revolutionize the way they work, AI companions will support everyday life, the use of AI resources will be more efficient, testing and customization will be key to developing AI, and AI will accelerate scientific research breakthroughs.

Here's a closer look at Microsoft's forecast and its potential impact:

First, AI models will become more powerful and useful

Reasoning efficiency and functionality: AI models have made significant progress in reasoning efficiency and functionality over the past year. For example, OpenAI's advanced models are capable of solving complex problems in human-like logical steps and are applicable in fields such as science, coding, mathematics, law, and medicine. These models enable contract comparison, code generation, and multi-step workflow execution.

Importance of data management and post-training optimization: Model innovation is not only dependent on improved reasoning ability, data management and post-training optimization are also critical. Microsoft's Phi model series shows that high-quality data can significantly improve the performance and reasoning power of AI models; Orca and Orca 2 demonstrate the effect of synthetic data on post-training optimization of small language models, enabling them to achieve the performance levels of previous large language models and perform better on specific tasks. These advances will create more practical AI experiences in 2025, including applications in AI Agents.

Second, AI Agents will completely change the way of working

AI products that perform tasks autonomously: AI Agents are AI products that can perform tasks autonomously or automatically on behalf of users, and can be software programs or AI assistants integrated in various devices. These Agents are able to understand natural language instructions, complete complex tasks through learning and reasoning, and interact naturally with users.

Microsoft says nearly 70 percent of employees at Fortune 500 companies already use Agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot to handle a lot of repetitive daily tasks, such as automatically sifting through emails and taking notes and summaries during Teams meetings.

Features of the next generation of AI Agents: By 2025, the new generation of AI Agents will be more powerful, with advances in memory, reasoning, and multimodal capabilities to handle multiple complex jobs in a better interactive way. More advanced memory and reasoning abilities will enable AI Agents to have more powerful memory functions and remember users' historical behaviors, preferences and working habits, so as to provide more personalized and accurate services. At the same time, their reasoning ability will also be improved, and they will be able to better understand complex situations and business logic, and make more reasonable and efficient decisions. For example, in supply chain management, Agents can predict inventory demand changes based on historical data and real-time information, adjust procurement and production plans in advance, and avoid inventory overstocking or shortage.

Multimodal interaction and collaboration: The new generation of AI Agents will support multiple interaction modes, including text, images, voice, etc., allowing users to communicate with Agents in a more natural and convenient way. At the same time, the collaboration ability among Agents will also be strengthened, and they can work together like human team members, share information and resources, and complete complex tasks together. For example, in a large project, different Agents can be responsible for project planning, progress tracking, resource allocation and risk assessment respectively, and exchange data and feedback in real time to ensure the smooth progress of the project.

Microsoft's layout: At the Microsoft ignite 2024 global Developer Conference held in November last year, Microsoft integrated a large number of commercial AI Agents in major products such as Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365, which laid an important foundation for the explosion of Agents in 2025. Charles Lamanna, vice president of Microsoft Business and Industry Copilot, believes that AI Agents will be a new type of application for the AI era, just like we use different applications to perform different tasks, AI Agents will revolutionize the way we work and business processes.

Third, AI partners will support daily life

What Microsoft Copilot does: In 2025, Microsoft Copilot will play a role in everyday life as an AI companion, helping to simplify and prioritize everyday tasks such as automatically managing large amounts of data and freeing up personal time while safeguarding privacy, data and security.

Copilot Evolution and new features: Copilot will continue to evolve with more new features. For example, Copilot Daily provides users with news and weather summaries in a familiar voice; Copilot Vision understands the web pages users are browsing, interacts with users, answers questions and provides recommendations; It can also help users make decisions, such as searching for matching furniture when furnishing a new apartment and planning the layout. In the future, AI experiences will be more accurate, emotional intelligence will be improved, and more smooth interactions will be achieved.

The use of AI resources will be more efficient

Resource consumption and innovative solutions: AI needs to consume a lot of resources in the process of working, and innovative solutions are addressing this challenge. For example, while global data center workloads will be nine times higher in 2020 than in 2010, data center power demand will only increase by 10%. That's because Microsoft is working with companies like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia to improve the efficiency of its hardware, including its custom silicon family, Azure Maia, and Cobalt, as well as highly efficient cooling heat exchangers designed for large-scale AI systems.

Future Data centers and Sustainability: In the coming years, new AI-enabled data centers will come online that do not consume any water for cooling, and the company will expand its use of ultra-efficient liquid cooling systems. These innovations are all aimed at making AI infrastructure more efficient and sustainable by 2025. As Microsoft helps build more efficient AI infrastructure, it will continue to invest in and use low-carbon building materials, including near-zero carbon steel, concrete alternatives, and cross-laminated wood. Microsoft will also continue to invest in and use carbon-free energy sources such as wind, geothermal, nuclear and solar. The company is making long-term investments to bring more carbon-free electricity into the grid it operates and continues to advocate for the expansion of clean energy solutions around the world.

Testing and customization are key to developing AI

The importance of testing: Testing is defining and assessing risk in AI and is essential to building AI responsibly. The evolution of AI in 2025 can be summed up in two words - testing and customization. If you can test for risks and threats, you can help address or mitigate them. This means, for example, detecting and resolving AI "illusion" responses that are by no means accurate. Part of Microsoft's ongoing efforts to build secure AI applications is the development of rigorous and comprehensive testing. In addition to assessing insider threats, testing will become better at identifying external and increasingly sophisticated attacks.

AI will accelerate scientific research breakthroughs

Impact on scientific research: AI is already having a huge impact around the world, driving advances in everything from supercomputing to weather forecasting. It is driving historic breakthroughs in scientific research and promises to unlock new capabilities in areas such as natural sciences, sustainable materials, drug discovery and human health.

Microsoft Research Breakthroughs: In 2024, for example, Microsoft Research made breakthroughs that allowed researchers to explore some of the world's most difficult biomolecular science questions with unprecedented speed and precision, including the discovery of life-saving drugs. Using AI-powered protein simulation systems, researchers have found a new way (AI2BMD) to model biomolecular dynamics. AI2BMD can help scientists solve previously intractable problems and advance biomedical research such as protein design, enzyme engineering and drug discovery.

Ashley Llorens, vice president and managing director of Microsoft Research, said that one of the most exciting things in 2025 will be how the use of AI in scientific research can drive progress in solving some of the world's most pressing problems. AI will continue to drive scientific innovation and unlock huge application potential for people and organizations around the world.