Here’s our forecast for AI this year
Surging emissions, battlefield algorithms, Trump’s chip war, and other predictions.
In December, our small but mighty AI reporting team was asked by our editors to make a prediction: What’s coming next for AI?
In 2024, AI contributed both to Nobel Prize–winning chemistry breakthroughs and a mountain of cheaply made content that few people asked for but that nonetheless flooded the internet. Take AI-generated Shrimp Jesus images, among other examples. There was also a spike in greenhouse-gas emissions last year that can be attributed partly to the surge in energy-intensive AI. Our team got to thinking about how all of this will shake out in the year to come.
