Gartner has released its top 10 strategic technology trends for 2025

These are the gurus Gartner Monday released their list of the top 10 strategic technology trends to watch in 2025 — a list heavily influenced by artificial intelligence.

“This year’s top strategic technology trends span new frontiers in AI requirements and risk, computing and human-machine synergy,” Gartner vice president analyst Jean Alvarez said in a statement. “Tracking these trends will help IT leaders shape their organization’s future with responsible and ethical innovation.” .”

Dr. was at the top of the list Agentic AI systems, which can autonomously plan and execute actions based on user-defined goals. By 2028, the firm predicted that at least 15% of daily work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI, up from 0% in 2024.

“Agent AI is definitely the future of the enterprise workforce,” said Ambuj Kumar, founder symbianMountain View, Calif. provider of autonomous AI agents for cybersecurity.

“Imagine a field like security with a shortage of 3.5 million workers, overworked employees and the need to constantly learn about emerging threats,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Against that landscape, how attractive would an offering be that provides virtual employees who are always trained on the latest and greatest, cost 10 times less than humans, operate 24×7 and scale elastically based on business needs? This is the promise of AI agents.”

Agentic AI challenges

To achieve the penetration predicted by Gartner, however, agentic AI technology will have to overcome some challenges. “Designing effective agentic AI systems is still experimental,” explains Sandy Bessen, an applied AI researcher at IBM and NewDesicA global professional services firm.

“As AI engineers and solution architects continue to refine their approaches, the field will evolve,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“Many popular agentic frameworks approach the design of building an AI system differently. Currently, popular frameworks like LangChain and Autogen rely heavily on language models to make decisions, while others, like Langgraph, integrate AI agents into more structured, rule-based workflows.

“The success of these systems depends on how they are designed, which is still an evolving area. We will likely see both successes and failures before industry-wide best practices emerge.”

What’s more, he added, “the willingness of businesses to adopt these evolving systems will also be a key factor in the scalability and long-term success of agentic AI.”

“As AI advances, it has the potential to further improve productivity and provide workers with new ways to solve problems,” said Jennifer Huddleston, Technology Policy Research Fellow. Cato InstituteA Washington, DC think tank.

“There are a lot of different ways this could happen, and some will be industry-specific and quite significant, others will be more subtle,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“The right integration of AI and the productivity gains from AI will certainly vary depending on the role and industry, but the important principle is not to try to predict all possible uses and allow industry and technology to provide beneficial options. solve broad challenges.”

AI Governance Platform

Gartner advises organizations to consider deploying AI governance platforms. These platforms have the ability to create, manage and enforce policies for responsible AI use, explain how AI systems work and provide transparency to build trust and accountability, it explains.

Gartner predicts that by 2028, organizations that implement comprehensive AI governance platforms will experience 40% fewer AI-related ethical incidents than those without such systems.

“Without question, AI governance is critical to mitigating ethical incidents because it provides structured oversight and accountability in AI development and deployment,” said Mark N. Vena, President and Chief Analyst SmartTech Research In Las Vegas.

“By implementing clear policies and frameworks, organizations can ensure that AI systems are consistent with ethical standards, such as fairness, transparency and impartiality,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“Governance platforms help monitor and control AI behavior, making it easier to identify and address potential risks early,” he added. “Without proper governance, organizations are more likely to face problems such as discriminatory outcomes, privacy violations and regulatory non-compliance.”

Addressing misinformation

Gartner also predicted that more companies will invest in distraction protection. By 2028, it predicts that 50% of enterprises will begin adopting products, services or features that are explicitly designed to address disruptive security use cases, compared to less than 5% today.

“Misleading information drives bad decisions, and that’s especially problematic for AIs,” said Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst. Enderle GroupBend, Ore. is an advisory services firm.

“AIs will make decisions much faster on this bad data, making post-decision mitigation nearly impossible by humans,” he told TechNewsWorld. “So solving the confusion problem becomes more important for AI than for humans.”

Vena added that confusion can harm enterprises by damaging their reputation, as false information spreads quickly and can lead to public mistrust.

“It could cause financial loss if the confusion disrupts operations, affects stock prices or confuses customers,” he said.

“Additionally,” he continued, “confusion can create security vulnerabilities by manipulating employees, thereby increasing susceptibility to poor decision-making or social engineering attacks.”

Postquantum cryptography

Postquantum cryptography also needs to be on organizations’ radars in 2025 Quantum computing developments are expected to put an end to the various types of conventional cryptography that are now widely used, Gartner explained. It predicts that by 2029, advances in quantum computing will make most conventional asymmetric cryptography unsafe to use.

“I completely agree with Gartner’s statement,” said Florian Neukert, chief product officer Terra QuantumA quantum as a service provider in St. Gallen, Switzerland.

“The 2029 prediction is realistic because of rapid advances in quantum computing,” he told TechNewsWorld.

“Conventional asymmetric cryptography, esp RSA and ECC, vulnerable to quantum attacks, such as Shor’s algorithm, which can break these systems. Organizations need to start transitioning to post-quantum cryptographic solutions now. Significant lead time is required to change cryptographic methods to ensure that sensitive data remains secure in the quantum future.”

Duncan Jones, Head of Cyber ​​Security quantiniumGartner’s prediction, an international quantum computing hardware and software company, strongly misses an important point. “The date is critical for organizations to take threats seriously,” he told TechNewsWorld. “And that date has already passed.”

Neuromancer by 2030?

Another strategic technology identified by Gartner is neural growth. It maintains that the technology will have huge potential in three areas: human upskilling, next-generation marketing and performance. Neural augmentation will increase cognitive ability, enable brands to know what consumers are thinking and feeling, and increase human neural capacity to optimize results, it noted.

It predicts that by 2030, 30% of knowledge workers will be enhanced and dependent on technologies such as two-way brain-machine interfaces. Enderley disputed Gartner’s forecast. “Right now, the technology is very limited and just reading the brain requires a level of training that won’t scale,” he said.

“Returning information to the brain is not yet sorted out, at least not publicly,” he explained. “Given the lack of progress here, I think the 2030 prediction is unreliable.”

“However,” he continued, “AI is significantly accelerating development in this area, making it at least possible, if not probable, that this prediction will be correct.”

“When two-way information can flow from and to a brain using these brain-machine interfaces, that will be the true beginning of the singularity, but where the technology is now, any timeline will be little more than a little educated guess.”

Other strategic technologies in the Gartner spotlight include:

• Greater use of ambient invisible intelligence through ultra-low cost, small smart tags and sensors will enable deeper integration of sensing and intelligence into everyday life.
• The growth of energy-efficient computing, with the expectation that by the late 2020s, several new compute technologies, such as optical, neuromorphic and novel accelerators, will emerge for special-purpose tasks, such as AI and optimization, that will consume significantly less energy.
• Greater use of hybrid computing to create highly efficient transformative innovation environments that perform more efficiently than conventional environments.
• The growth of spatial computing to enhance the physical world, along with augmented and virtual reality, will become a US$1.7 trillion market by 2033.
• The proliferation of multifunctional robots – robots that can perform multiple tasks at once – so that by 2030, 80% of people will engage with a smart robot on a daily basis.