Artificial intelligence developments keep shaping the future of humanity in nearly all industries. Artificial intelligence is presently the driving force behind emerging technology like big data, robotics and the Internet of Things, and generative AI has widened the capabilities and popularity of AI even further.
A 2023 IBM poll discovered that 42 percent of enterprise-level businesses have implemented AI into operations, and 40 percent of businesses have intentions to utilize AI within companies. In addition, 38 percent of businesses have included generative AI into workflows and 42 percent have intentions to do the same.
With all the changes happening so fast, here's what changing in AI means to different industries and to society as a whole.
The Evolution of AI
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Artificial intelligence came a long way since 1951, the year that the first documented success of an artificial intelligence computer program was written by Christopher Strachey, the creator of a checkers program that won a full game on the Ferranti Mark I machine at the University of Manchester. With the development of machine learning and deep learning, IBM's Deep Blue defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997 and IBM Watson defeated Jeopardy! in 2011.
Since then, the current generation of the evolution of AI has been spearheaded by generative AI, with the initial GPT models being introduced by Open AI in 2018.. This has given rise to OpenAI's GPT-4o model and the creation of its ChatGPT, with a broad array of AI generators that have the ability to process queries to produce corresponding text, audio, images and other forms of material.
They have now been followed by other companies with competing models of their own, including Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, and Deep Seek’s R1 and V3 models, which made news in the first quarter of 2025 by matching competing models but with a fraction of the operational expense.
Artificial intelligence is also being applied to the RNA sequencing of vaccines and to simulating human speech, technologies that rely on model- and algorithm-based machine learning and increasingly focus on perception, reasoning and generalization.
How AI Will Impact the Future
Improved Business Automation
AI's ability to process massive amounts of information and present its insights in simple-to-understand visual formats also accelerates the decision-making process. Executives don't have to sort through the information themselves but rather leverage real-time insights to make informed decisions.
"If they have a notion of what the technology can do and they have a sense of the domain, they start to make connections and say, 'Maybe this is an AI problem, maybe that's an AI problem,'" said Mike Mendelson, a learner experience designer with NVIDIA. "That's more probable than, 'I need to solve a specific problem.'"
Job Disruption Automating the business has understandably led to concerns that jobs will be lost. In fact, workers believe that almost a third of the work that they do could be handled by artificial intelligence. As AI has taken hold in the workforce, it’s had a disproportionate impact on different industries and jobs. Clerical positions like secretaries, for example, could potentially be taken over by automation, but demand for other jobs like machine learning specialists and information security specialists has risen. More skilled or creative workers will have a better opportunity to have their jobs supplemented by automation, rather than being displaced by it. Whether it's by requiring workers to relearn new tools or by doing the jobs themselves, AI will create the demand for individual and organizational upskilling. One of the certain prerequisites for the success of AI in most domains is that we need to invest a lot in education to re-skill individuals into new occupations, according to Klara Nahrstedt, professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and director of the university's Coordinated Science Laboratory.
Increased Regulation
AI could redefine the way that certain legal matters are considered, depending on the manner in which generative AI litigation goes in 2024. The issue of intellectual property, for example, has come to the forefront with copyright actions being pursued by authors, musicians and companies like The New York Times against OpenAI. These events have consequences for the definition of private and public property in the U.S. legal system, and a loss would have serious implications for OpenAI and its competitors.
The moral issues that have surfaced with generative AI have placed additional pressure on the U.S. government to take a stronger stance. The Biden-Harris administration has kept its middle-of-the-road position with its latest executive order, placing loose boundaries on data privacy, civil liberties, responsible AI and other aspects of AI. The government could, however, lean toward more stringent regulations, depending on the political winds
Climate change concerns
At a much bigger level, AI is likely to leave a profound impact on the topics of the environment, climate change and sustainability. Optimists believe that with the help of AI, supply chains could be made more efficient, carrying out predictive maintenance and other processes to reduce the level of carbon emissions. At the same time, though, AI also emerges as a chief cause of climate change. The energy and resources that it requires to create and maintain AI models have the capability to raise the level of carbon emissions by as much as 80 percent, a crushing blow to any effort to make technology sustainable. Even if utilized in sustainable technology, the cost of model development and model training could leave society in an environmentally worse position than it was before it was ever developed.
Accelerated Speed of Innovation
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei hypothesizes in an essay on the future of artificial intelligence that advanced A.I. technology could speed research in the life sciences by as much as tenfold, triggering a phenomenon that he calls “the compressed 21st century,” in which 50 to 100 years of development would take place in five to 10. The hypothesis is based on the assumption that revolutionary advances occur with a frequency of perhaps one a year, with the constraint being a shortage of qualified researchers. With more mental capacity being applied to the development of hypotheses and experimenting with them, Amodei suggests that we could cut the interval between major discoveries like the 25-year interval between the discovery of CRISPR in the ‘80s and its application to gene editing.
Which industries will be most affected by AI?
There isn't a significant sector that modern artificial intelligence hasn't touched as of today. Some of the sectors that have transformed the most with the help of AI are mentioned below.
AI in Manufacturing
The manufacturing sector has long utilized the potential of AI. Ever since the 1960s and 1970s, with the invention of robot arms and other factory robots driven by AI, the industry has eagerly utilized the potential of AI. Industrial robots typically support human labor to perform a limited number of operations like stacking and assembly, and predictive sensor checks maintain the equipment in proper working condition.