Amy Webb Launches 2025 Emerging Tech Trend Report | SXSW LIVE

Key Concepts

• The Beyond: A liminal space humanity has entered due to rapid advancements in science and technology, causing societal rules to break down.
• Technology Supercycle: A decades-long period of economic expansion driven by the convergence of general-purpose technologies like AI, biotechnology, and advanced sensors.
• Stone in Your Shoe Effect: A cognitive impairment caused by fixating on immediate discomforts, hindering long-term planning and leading to reactive decision-making.
• Multi-Agent Systems (MAS): AI systems composed of multiple agents that can assign tasks, build on each other's work, and deliberate to find solutions without human intervention.
• Droid Speak: A mathematical language developed by Microsoft for faster communication between multi-agent systems, bypassing the limitations of human languages.
• Embodied AI: AI systems that interact with the physical world through a body or physical form, gaining experience and intuition.
• Model Context Protocol: An open standard, similar to HTTP for the internet, that securely connects AI tools with various data sources from sensors.
• Generative Biology: Similar to generative AI, but for biology, enabling the prediction of biological structures and interactions.
• Metamaterials: Engineered materials with properties not found in nature, created through precise microstructural design, breaking the normal rules of physics.
• Organoid Intelligence (OAI): Using biological materials, usually brain cells, for information processing, enabling more powerful computing than silicon alone.
• Living Intelligence (LI): A system that can sense, learn, adapt, and evolve, made possible through AI, advanced sensors, and biotech; an ecosystem of interconnected agents, machines, and biological entities.

1. Introduction and Setting the Stage

The speaker, Amy Webb, expresses gratitude to the audience and introduces the session as an interactive experience rather than a speech. She initiates a group activity involving wooden blocks, instructing attendees to sit on them to introduce discomfort and highlight the "stone in your shoe effect." She quotes Lenin ("There are weeks when decades happen") to emphasize the rapid pace of change and the feeling of living in unprecedented times.

2. The State of the World: Entering the Beyond

Webb argues that humanity has entered "the beyond," a liminal space where the rules of society are breaking down due to rapid technological advancements. She cites examples like:

• Climate Change: The hottest year in human history with unknown causes, compounded by greenhouse gases, warming oceans, and melting glaciers.
• Plastic Consumption: The need for instructions on how to eat less plastic, with some people having a "disposable spoons worth of plastic" lodged in their brains.
• Human Enhancement: The emergence of the Enhanced Games, a competition where athletes are encouraged to use steroids and gene therapy to maximize human potential.

She introduces the concept of a "technology supercycle" driven by the convergence of AI, biotechnology, and advanced sensors, leading to economic expansion followed by eventual correction.

3. Introducing Future Today Strategy Group (FTSG)

Amy Webb announces the rebranding of her company to Future Today Strategy Group (FTSG). She explains FTSG's methodology:

• Tracking Signals: Using extensive data to identify long-term trends.
• Identifying Unknowns: Combining trends with uncertainties.
• Developing Macro Scenarios: Creating plausible future scenarios.
• Strategic Foresight: Determining where the world is going, where value will be created, and how to participate.

She also mentions her role as a professor at NYU Stern, where she teaches strategic foresight.

4. The 18th Annual Tech Trends Report: Theme "Beyond"

Webb introduces the 18th anniversary edition of the Tech Trends Report, themed "Beyond." The report is 1000 pages long and divided into two sections: technologies and industries. Key features of the report include:

• Executive Summary: Ten key takeaways.
• Framework: A framework for explaining trends to others.
• Time of Impact Heat Map: A visual guide to when to pay attention to specific trends.
• Top 5 Things You Need to Know: For each section.
• Pioneers and Power Players List: People to watch in the coming year.
• Opportunities and Threats: Presented by the trends.
• Trend Trajectories and Scenarios: Describing how the future could look different.

5. The Stone in Your Shoe Effect Explained

Webb explains the "stone in your shoe effect" as a temporary cognitive impairment caused by fixating on immediate discomforts, leading to reactive decision-making and hindering long-term planning. She uses the analogy of walking with a stone in your shoe and missing opportunities. She argues that leaders often react rather than anticipate, iterate rather than innovate, and fear the future rather than plan for it.

6. AI and Data Ingestion: The First Cluster of Trends

This section focuses on the convergence of AI and new ways to ingest data. Key trends include:

• Rapid AI Advancements: New AI models like Deep Seek and S1 outperforming existing models with fewer resources.
• Multi-Agent Systems (MAS): AI agents working together to solve problems without human intervention, as demonstrated by DARPA's bomb defusal experiment and Altera's Minecraft simulation.
• Droid Speak: Microsoft's new mathematical language for faster communication between multi-agent systems.
• Abundant and Invisible Data: Using sensors to collect data from various sources, such as a microscopic Fitbit for dogs.
• Embodied AI: AI systems interacting with the physical world through bodies or physical forms, requiring physical data ingestion.
• Model Context Protocol: An open standard for securely connecting AI tools with data sources from sensors.
• Brain-Computer Interfaces: Connecting sensors to brains to collect and play back data, as demonstrated by experiments with paralyzed individuals.

Key Insight: Sensor networks are transforming AI from observer to controller.

7. AI and Biology: The Second Cluster of Trends

This section explores the convergence of AI and biology. Key trends include:

• Generative Biology: Advancements in predicting biological structures and interactions, exemplified by Google's DeepMind AlphaFold 3.
• Cow Rice: Rice made with cow genes, demonstrating the potential for creating new food sources.
• Metamaterials: Engineered materials with properties not found in nature, such as bricks that behave like human lungs.
• Organoid Intelligence (OAI): Using brain cells for information processing, leading to the development of brain computers.
• Commercial Brain Computers: Companies like Cortical Labs and Final Spark selling computers made out of human neurons.

Key Insight: In the beyond, AI and biology are merging to make matter programmable and life reprogrammable.

8. Biology and Sensors: The Third Cluster of Trends

This section focuses on the convergence of biology and sensors. Key trends include:

• Skin Masks for Machines: Robots with skin made out of real human skin cells.
• Chimeric Microbe Motors: Combining different parts of motors from bacteria to create new motors.
• Sperm Bots: Wearables for sperm that respond to magnets, improving their direction.
• Wearables for Cells: Tiny devices that wrap around neurons, enabling targeted stimulation and treatment.

Key Insight: Microscopic machines are going to give us power over nature.

9. Living Intelligence (LI): The Big Picture

Webb argues that the "beyond" is not just a metaphor but a real thing: living intelligence (LI). LI is a system that can sense, learn, adapt, and evolve, made possible through AI, advanced sensors, and biotech. She emphasizes that LI is not the same as AGI (artificial general intelligence) but an ecosystem of interconnected agents, machines, and biological entities.

10. Living Intelligence and Robotics

Webb discusses the impact of LI on robotics, arguing that LI is finally unlocking new pathways to advancements. She cites examples like:

• Robots Tying Shoes: Google DeepMind training a robot to tie a shoe, a significant breakthrough in robotics.
• Biohybrid Robots: Robots made from both biological and mechanical components, such as a robot that is part fungus and part machine, and a biohybrid robotic jellyfish.
• Human-ish Robots: Prototypes inspired by human anatomy, with twitching muscles.
• Pharma Bots: Robots that can perform the tasks of a human pharmacist.

She argues that big tech companies need robots to achieve AGI, as embodiment is essential for intelligence.

11. Scenarios for 2035: Perfect Sound and Climate Change

Webb presents two scenarios for the year 2035:

• Perfect Sound: A world where sonic sanctuaries (SS) eliminate noise pollution but are then used by an autocratic government for population control.
• Climate Change: A world where business leaders solve climate change but optimize for profit, leading to deregulation and domestic terrorism.

The big theme from these scenarios is that on our current path, we are headed straight into a future tragedy of the commons.

12. Conclusion and Call to Action

Webb concludes by emphasizing the importance of strategic foresight and making the right decisions in the present. She urges the audience to pay attention to what's happening and position themselves to make better decisions. She encourages them to download the Tech Trends Report, attend the strategic foresight masterclass, and remember that every decision is a doorway to a better future.