From generative breakthroughs to growing ethical concerns, here’s what defined AI in 2024 — and what it means for the year ahead.

The past few years have been groundbreaking for artificial intelligence, but 2024 may go down as the year the AI era truly began.

Technological advances, booming investment, and industry-wide integration propelled AI into sectors ranging from healthcare and finance to agriculture and entertainment. At the same time, the emergence of multimodal models, generative AI, and increasingly complex systems forced conversations around ethics, sustainability, and regulation to the forefront.

As we looks to the year ahead, we’re reflecting on the Top 10 AI Trends shaping 2025, highlighting the programs, companies, and industries driving the conversation.

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5. GPU Shortages

• Program in focus: NVIDIA H100
• Company: NVIDIA
• Industry: Hardware & Technology

The exponential demand for AI models in 2024 triggered a severe shortage of GPUs, with NVIDIA’s H100 chips at the center of the crunch. These processors, vital for training advanced AI systems, became a bottleneck — particularly for startups and research institutions unable to match the purchasing power of Big Tech.

The shortage underscored the urgent need for hardware diversification, fueling interest in alternative computing architectures, such as custom AI chips and quantum accelerators.

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4. Multimodal AI

• Program in focus: OpenAI GPT-4
• Company: OpenAI
• Industry: Healthcare

Multimodal AI — capable of understanding and generating across text, image, and audio — surged in 2024, with OpenAI’s GPT-4 leading the charge.

These models found critical use cases in healthcare, where they assist in diagnosis, generate clinical notes, and improve patient interactions. More broadly, multimodal AI blurred the lines between media types, enabling richer user experiences and more intuitive tools across industries.

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3. Ethical Concerns

• Framework in focus: DeepMind Ethics Framework
• Company: Google DeepMind
• Industry: Responsible AI

Ethics took center stage as AI models grew more powerful — and more controversial. Incidents involving bias, misinformation, and surveillance prompted widespread calls for transparency and accountability.

Google DeepMind’s Ethics Framework became a benchmark, promoting principles such as fairness, interpretability, and human oversight. As regulation tightened globally, ethical design became not just a moral priority, but a business imperative.

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2. Sustainability

• Program in focus: Carbon Tracker
• Company: Google
• Industry: Environmental Tech

AI’s double-edged role in the climate crisis came into focus in 2024.

On one hand, tools like Carbon Tracker — developed with Google — used satellite data and AI to monitor global emissions, forecast weather patterns, and support climate action.

On the other, the environmental cost of AI itself became harder to ignore. Energy-hungry data centers, water use for cooling, and growing e-waste sparked urgent debates around green AI development.

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1. Generative AI

• Program in focus: Med-PaLM 2
• Company: Google DeepMind
• Industry: Healthcare

Generative AI secured its status as the most transformative AI trend of 2024.

Beyond chatbots, models like Google DeepMind’s Med-PaLM 2 are revolutionizing healthcare, parsing complex datasets to improve diagnostics and personalise treatment at scale.

Generative tools are also disrupting content creation, finance, and legal industries, enabling faster workflows and new business models. With rapid evolution and expanding applications, generative AI is poised to reshape nearly every sector in 2025.