2025 AI Predictions - Part 3

In the final part of APMdigest's 2025 Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 3 covers AI's impact on employees and their roles.

AI AGENTS OUTNUMBER HUMANS

AI Agents Will Outnumber Humans Within 3 Years: At our current rate, most enterprises will employ more AI agents within their IT infrastructure than humans working at the organization. AI digitization efforts are driving transformation within organizations and teams. AI Agents represent an evolution in the future of work as they will be capable of handling mundane and process-oriented tasks. While this will drive efficiency transformation, it doesn't mean it will eliminate human jobs. As more AI agents are introduced, human oversight and maintenance will also increase in importance, as agents rely on systems of tracking, registration, and control. In this evolution, transparent protocols and governance are important for AI success and will become more significant as agents become embedded in the future of work.
Steve Lucas
CEO, Boomi

AI PERFORMANCE METRICS

In 2025, there will be a rise in demand for AI copilots that offer transparent usage analytics and performance visibility. Enterprises will prioritize solutions that provide insights into AI adoption, identify areas for improvement, and mitigate security risks.
Dan Adika
CEO, WalkMe

AI initiatives will be as "unsuccessful" as business leaders make them: A question every business leader is asking is whether or not the investments they have made in AI have produced anything of value. They are asking this question too soon. In 2024, many organizations threw money at AI with the mindset that they would see immediate and meaningful results, without thinking critically about what those key indicators are. Now that we have experimented with AI in 2024, this year we will see leaders determine the key metrics for evaluating success, and thinking about long-term measurement.
Carter Busse
CIO, Workato

AI CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE

In 2025, we'll see more companies build out internal AI centers of excellence to both support the upskilling of existing teams in AI developer tools and drive AI-backed product innovation. The current shortage of AI and ML talent means that companies will be asking engineers with this expertise to do double duty in both educating the organization and driving innovation.
Emily Nakashima
VP of Engineering, Honeycomb

AI UPSKILLING

AI education becomes C-level priority: In the era of AI, traditional white-collar workers worry about job security, while employees with strong tech and AI expertise are in major demand. It's assumed that the former will be replaced by the latter. But reskilling workers is easier than replacing them: That's why next year we'll instead see enterprises invest aggressively in AI education for their existing employees. LLMs have already shown how everyone can effectively wield AI. Rather than compete over a small pool of AI experts, major companies will re-train workers to leverage the technology. AI upskilling will soon become a C-level priority.
Dr. Devavrat Shah
CEO of Ikigai Labs and MIT AI Professor

With rapid AI-driven transformation, enterprises prioritizing democratization will rise to the top: As emerging AI tools continue to infiltrate IT departments in 2025, changing the way teams work, employees who have not developed the skills to utilize the technology will require resources and space to be trained. Rapid AI-driven transformation will exacerbate the obstacles presented by the AI skills gap. With the rise of AI agents and excitement among the C-suite to stay ahead of new technological developments, IT leaders will face increased pressure and workloads — and democratizing access to AI and upskilling employees will become a bigger priority than ever. Leadership will need to take a top-down change management approach, supporting employees to close the skills gap. It is crucial for IT leaders to not only train and educate employees but also to spark an interest in them to independently research and become well-informed on AI. In the next year, businesses that are intentional with upskilling will maximize AI's benefits with a competitive edge, while those who rush to incorporate AI's next big thing before their team is ready will be hindered in their efforts to innovate.
Ed Macosky
CPTO, Boomi

Companies will need to continuously upskill employees and provide tailored education programs that address both the technical and ethical dimensions of AI. In 2025, companies that invest early in AI skill-building will unlock greater efficiency, drive innovation, and future-proof their workforce. Leaders will need to introduce tailored upskilling programs, cross-functional AI training, ethics and responsible AI programs, and AI mentorship workshops. Organizations that invest early in building AI fluency will not only enhance internal efficiency but also position themselves as leaders in the evolving AI landscape.
Peter van der Putten
Director of AI Lab and Lead Scientist, Pega

PERSONALIZED CONTINUOUS LEARNING

Expect in 2025 that AI will foster continuous learning personalized at scale, empowering organizations to identify unique skilling needs of individual employees and curate a customized learning program in real-time and at an affordable cost. In the coming year, organizations will ramp up on their use of AI-enabled platforms to empower learning and help non-technical employees be more confident about using AI at work. By investing in employee development, fostering a collaborative work environment, and promoting a culture of continuous learning, organizations can unlock the full potential of their workforce and drive long-term growth.
Sunil Senan
Infosys Global Head - Data, Analytics & AI

AI SKILLS BEYOND IT

AI Proficiency Will Be Required for All Employees, Not Just IT: As AI becomes a core part of business operations, the demand for AI literacy will grow exponentially. In 2025, the workforce will undergo a significant shift toward AI proficiency, with employees across functions required to develop both technical and soft skills to thrive in an AI-powered environment. AI will no longer be the remit of just the IT and data teams — it will permeate marketing, HR, finance, and operations, requiring a broad-based understanding of AI tools and their applications.
Peter van der Putten
Director of AI Lab and Lead Scientist, Pega

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE VS. TECH SKILLS

Hiring for tech skills will matter less than emotional intelligence: In 2025, the demand for IT professionals will not slow down — the nature of living in an AI-driven world calls for those experts. But a significant shift in desirable skills is on the horizon as we move towards roles that blend business acumen with tech skills and novel AI technologies. Technical roles will no longer be traditional because they aren't necessarily the tech users moving the business forward. Organizations will start prioritizing high emotional intelligence and strong people skills over pure technical expertise, which are essential to training teams at the business level on how to use the advanced technologies available to them. This shift will be paramount to driving complex digital transformation, and innovation, and facilitating the integration of technology, like AI and automation, into business processes.
Carter Busse
CIO, Workato

AI ROLE: AI ENGINEER

The AI Engineer's Role Will Shift from Development to Refinement: In 2025, AI engineers won't just be coders — they'll be problem-solvers. Their role will evolve beyond simply building AI apps to refining them for consistency, accuracy and customer-centric experiences. Engineers will prioritize solving specialized problems and creating apps that meet user needs rather than focusing solely on technical functionality.
Avthar Sewrathan
AI Product Lead, Timescale

AI ROLE: FACT CHECKER

The growing demand and increased use of AI will intensify the demand for fact-checkers and data scientists. Evaluation will become a new specialty within software development. We will need more fact-checkers. The errors that AI makes are often very subtle and hard to notice, especially since AI is very good at sounding convincing — and since the errors AI is likely to make are unlike the mistakes that humans make. Simon Willison recently did an experiment when he asked an AI to describe two photos and posted both the photos and descriptions on his blog. The descriptions were very detailed and really quite good — but there were mistakes. And they weren't easy to find — the only way to find them was to look very carefully at every detail. That is not a skill most people have. I certainly don't.

There are already many data scientists, but we will need more. AI requires huge amounts of data, and data scientists know how to collect, clean, test, and evaluate that data. It's not surprising that we see increased use of content about data engineering on our platform.
Mike Loukides
VP of Emerging Tech Content, O'Reilly Media

AI ROLE: AI TRANSLATOR

The most important tech job of 2025 — AI translator: Enterprises are seeing the benefits of adopting AI copilots to reduce cognitive load and get results faster but that doesn't mean AI will take jobs away. For copilots to be effective, data, documents and policies need to be formatted so AI agents can consume them without generating false positives. New jobs like AI translators will emerge that are focused on writing or rewriting company documents to remove ambiguity and equip AI to make decisions.
Karthik Ranganathan
Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Yugabyte

AI ROLE: AI EXPERT BOARD MEMBER

Boards will need an AI expert: In 2025, organizations will ensure at least one person on their executive board is familiar with complex AI topics. You need at least one expert in the room with intimate knowledge of the technology to answer, "What happens to the business when AI goes sideways?" Especially as AI regulations become more firmly outlined and enforced, we'll see more organizations opt for a Board model that accounts for AI expertise for businesses' own longevity and the sake of customers' security.
Joel Carusone
SVP of Data and AI, NinjaOne

ON-DEMAND UI

Say Hi to the "On-The-Fly" UI: Enterprise software users have long had to deal with the complexities of a feature-rich but confusing user interface. Even the revered "Business Dashboard" is often a dizzying array of numbers and charts. A new breed of AI-native interfaces will drive a completely new interaction model between human and software. User interface will be constructed "on-demand," in response to the users inputs — showing just enough information, but no more.  Every user will be comfortable with AI-native interfaces immediately. Gone are the days of training courses and mountains of documentation.
Jeremy Burton
CEO, Observe

BI-DIRECTIONAL BRAIN-MACHINE INTERFACES

AI-enabled tech is going to help us humans keep up with AI — and so much more. The concept of bidirectional brain-machine interfaces is a particularly interesting one. These interfaces can read people's thoughts and communicate them outwards — and also vice versa, such as affecting thoughts, emotions, and memories. Of course, both these devices (plus robots) raise huge questions around ethical use, but putting those aside for one moment, bi-directional brain-machine interfaces could help humans keep up with AI by enabling them to think faster. For instance, recent breakthroughs will use AI to reduce drug development and delivery from many years to just months. Imagine if you could then add AI-enhanced humans to the equation, and discoveries and decisions could be made even faster. 
Rod Cope
CTO and Lead of the AI Innovation Council, Perforce Software

Go to: 2025 AI Predictions - Part 4

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2025 AI Predictions - Part 3

In the final part of APMdigest's 2025 Predictions Series, industry experts offer predictions on how AI will evolve and impact technology and business in 2025. Part 3 covers AI's impact on employees and their roles.

AI AGENTS OUTNUMBER HUMANS

AI Agents Will Outnumber Humans Within 3 Years: At our current rate, most enterprises will employ more AI agents within their IT infrastructure than humans working at the organization. AI digitization efforts are driving transformation within organizations and teams. AI Agents represent an evolution in the future of work as they will be capable of handling mundane and process-oriented tasks. While this will drive efficiency transformation, it doesn't mean it will eliminate human jobs. As more AI agents are introduced, human oversight and maintenance will also increase in importance, as agents rely on systems of tracking, registration, and control. In this evolution, transparent protocols and governance are important for AI success and will become more significant as agents become embedded in the future of work.
Steve Lucas
CEO, Boomi

AI PERFORMANCE METRICS

In 2025, there will be a rise in demand for AI copilots that offer transparent usage analytics and performance visibility. Enterprises will prioritize solutions that provide insights into AI adoption, identify areas for improvement, and mitigate security risks.
Dan Adika
CEO, WalkMe

AI initiatives will be as "unsuccessful" as business leaders make them: A question every business leader is asking is whether or not the investments they have made in AI have produced anything of value. They are asking this question too soon. In 2024, many organizations threw money at AI with the mindset that they would see immediate and meaningful results, without thinking critically about what those key indicators are. Now that we have experimented with AI in 2024, this year we will see leaders determine the key metrics for evaluating success, and thinking about long-term measurement.
Carter Busse
CIO, Workato

AI CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE

In 2025, we'll see more companies build out internal AI centers of excellence to both support the upskilling of existing teams in AI developer tools and drive AI-backed product innovation. The current shortage of AI and ML talent means that companies will be asking engineers with this expertise to do double duty in both educating the organization and driving innovation.
Emily Nakashima
VP of Engineering, Honeycomb

AI UPSKILLING

AI education becomes C-level priority: In the era of AI, traditional white-collar workers worry about job security, while employees with strong tech and AI expertise are in major demand. It's assumed that the former will be replaced by the latter. But reskilling workers is easier than replacing them: That's why next year we'll instead see enterprises invest aggressively in AI education for their existing employees. LLMs have already shown how everyone can effectively wield AI. Rather than compete over a small pool of AI experts, major companies will re-train workers to leverage the technology. AI upskilling will soon become a C-level priority.
Dr. Devavrat Shah
CEO of Ikigai Labs and MIT AI Professor

With rapid AI-driven transformation, enterprises prioritizing democratization will rise to the top: As emerging AI tools continue to infiltrate IT departments in 2025, changing the way teams work, employees who have not developed the skills to utilize the technology will require resources and space to be trained. Rapid AI-driven transformation will exacerbate the obstacles presented by the AI skills gap. With the rise of AI agents and excitement among the C-suite to stay ahead of new technological developments, IT leaders will face increased pressure and workloads — and democratizing access to AI and upskilling employees will become a bigger priority than ever. Leadership will need to take a top-down change management approach, supporting employees to close the skills gap. It is crucial for IT leaders to not only train and educate employees but also to spark an interest in them to independently research and become well-informed on AI. In the next year, businesses that are intentional with upskilling will maximize AI's benefits with a competitive edge, while those who rush to incorporate AI's next big thing before their team is ready will be hindered in their efforts to innovate.
Ed Macosky
CPTO, Boomi

Companies will need to continuously upskill employees and provide tailored education programs that address both the technical and ethical dimensions of AI. In 2025, companies that invest early in AI skill-building will unlock greater efficiency, drive innovation, and future-proof their workforce. Leaders will need to introduce tailored upskilling programs, cross-functional AI training, ethics and responsible AI programs, and AI mentorship workshops. Organizations that invest early in building AI fluency will not only enhance internal efficiency but also position themselves as leaders in the evolving AI landscape.
Peter van der Putten
Director of AI Lab and Lead Scientist, Pega

PERSONALIZED CONTINUOUS LEARNING

Expect in 2025 that AI will foster continuous learning personalized at scale, empowering organizations to identify unique skilling needs of individual employees and curate a customized learning program in real-time and at an affordable cost. In the coming year, organizations will ramp up on their use of AI-enabled platforms to empower learning and help non-technical employees be more confident about using AI at work. By investing in employee development, fostering a collaborative work environment, and promoting a culture of continuous learning, organizations can unlock the full potential of their workforce and drive long-term growth.
Sunil Senan
Infosys Global Head - Data, Analytics & AI

AI SKILLS BEYOND IT

AI Proficiency Will Be Required for All Employees, Not Just IT: As AI becomes a core part of business operations, the demand for AI literacy will grow exponentially. In 2025, the workforce will undergo a significant shift toward AI proficiency, with employees across functions required to develop both technical and soft skills to thrive in an AI-powered environment. AI will no longer be the remit of just the IT and data teams — it will permeate marketing, HR, finance, and operations, requiring a broad-based understanding of AI tools and their applications.
Peter van der Putten
Director of AI Lab and Lead Scientist, Pega

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE VS. TECH SKILLS

Hiring for tech skills will matter less than emotional intelligence: In 2025, the demand for IT professionals will not slow down — the nature of living in an AI-driven world calls for those experts. But a significant shift in desirable skills is on the horizon as we move towards roles that blend business acumen with tech skills and novel AI technologies. Technical roles will no longer be traditional because they aren't necessarily the tech users moving the business forward. Organizations will start prioritizing high emotional intelligence and strong people skills over pure technical expertise, which are essential to training teams at the business level on how to use the advanced technologies available to them. This shift will be paramount to driving complex digital transformation, and innovation, and facilitating the integration of technology, like AI and automation, into business processes.
Carter Busse
CIO, Workato

AI ROLE: AI ENGINEER

The AI Engineer's Role Will Shift from Development to Refinement: In 2025, AI engineers won't just be coders — they'll be problem-solvers. Their role will evolve beyond simply building AI apps to refining them for consistency, accuracy and customer-centric experiences. Engineers will prioritize solving specialized problems and creating apps that meet user needs rather than focusing solely on technical functionality.
Avthar Sewrathan
AI Product Lead, Timescale

AI ROLE: FACT CHECKER

The growing demand and increased use of AI will intensify the demand for fact-checkers and data scientists. Evaluation will become a new specialty within software development. We will need more fact-checkers. The errors that AI makes are often very subtle and hard to notice, especially since AI is very good at sounding convincing — and since the errors AI is likely to make are unlike the mistakes that humans make. Simon Willison recently did an experiment when he asked an AI to describe two photos and posted both the photos and descriptions on his blog. The descriptions were very detailed and really quite good — but there were mistakes. And they weren't easy to find — the only way to find them was to look very carefully at every detail. That is not a skill most people have. I certainly don't.

There are already many data scientists, but we will need more. AI requires huge amounts of data, and data scientists know how to collect, clean, test, and evaluate that data. It's not surprising that we see increased use of content about data engineering on our platform.
Mike Loukides
VP of Emerging Tech Content, O'Reilly Media

AI ROLE: AI TRANSLATOR

The most important tech job of 2025 — AI translator: Enterprises are seeing the benefits of adopting AI copilots to reduce cognitive load and get results faster but that doesn't mean AI will take jobs away. For copilots to be effective, data, documents and policies need to be formatted so AI agents can consume them without generating false positives. New jobs like AI translators will emerge that are focused on writing or rewriting company documents to remove ambiguity and equip AI to make decisions.
Karthik Ranganathan
Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Yugabyte

AI ROLE: AI EXPERT BOARD MEMBER

Boards will need an AI expert: In 2025, organizations will ensure at least one person on their executive board is familiar with complex AI topics. You need at least one expert in the room with intimate knowledge of the technology to answer, "What happens to the business when AI goes sideways?" Especially as AI regulations become more firmly outlined and enforced, we'll see more organizations opt for a Board model that accounts for AI expertise for businesses' own longevity and the sake of customers' security.
Joel Carusone
SVP of Data and AI, NinjaOne

ON-DEMAND UI

Say Hi to the "On-The-Fly" UI: Enterprise software users have long had to deal with the complexities of a feature-rich but confusing user interface. Even the revered "Business Dashboard" is often a dizzying array of numbers and charts. A new breed of AI-native interfaces will drive a completely new interaction model between human and software. User interface will be constructed "on-demand," in response to the users inputs — showing just enough information, but no more.  Every user will be comfortable with AI-native interfaces immediately. Gone are the days of training courses and mountains of documentation.
Jeremy Burton
CEO, Observe

BI-DIRECTIONAL BRAIN-MACHINE INTERFACES

AI-enabled tech is going to help us humans keep up with AI — and so much more. The concept of bidirectional brain-machine interfaces is a particularly interesting one. These interfaces can read people's thoughts and communicate them outwards — and also vice versa, such as affecting thoughts, emotions, and memories. Of course, both these devices (plus robots) raise huge questions around ethical use, but putting those aside for one moment, bi-directional brain-machine interfaces could help humans keep up with AI by enabling them to think faster. For instance, recent breakthroughs will use AI to reduce drug development and delivery from many years to just months. Imagine if you could then add AI-enhanced humans to the equation, and discoveries and decisions could be made even faster. 
Rod Cope
CTO and Lead of the AI Innovation Council, Perforce Software

Go to: 2025 AI Predictions - Part 4

Related Links

Hot Topics