As 2025 shapes up to be the year that Artificial Intelligence really goes mainstream, even America’s new Secretary of State for Education is sitting up and taking notice of AI. Or A1 (A One), as Linda McMahon, a former wrestling promoter, so memorably described it.
But anyway. AI is breaking through. It has eclipsed the metaverse and its startup universe has soaked up billions in venture capital. It’s the next big thing in the ‘white heat of technology’ that economic dreams and industrial strategies are riding on – and it’s coming this year to a workplace, school, hospital, transport hub or care home near you.
There’s a world of potential for transforming health and social care in an ageing society, but so far much of the professional research and discourse around AI has been focused on business. Which jobs will be lost and which will be created? How can we upskill the workforce for an AI revolution set to do to knowledge work what the industrial revolution did to manual labour?
When the World Economic Forum polled more than 1,000 leading global employers, representing more than 14 million workers, half of the firms surveyed said they plan to reorient their business in response to AI, two-thirds plan to hire talent with specific AI skills, and 40 per cent anticipate reducing their workforce where AI can automate tasks.
But what’s so important about AI is not what it reduces or replaces but what it might generate. Unlike industrial change which introduced assembly line innovations from above and was firmly controlled by management, AI-driven change has largely been a bottom-up process, seeping into organisations via employees experimenting on their own devices with ChatGBT and the rest.
AI agents can also be trained as digital assistants, creating a new wave of ‘agentic work’. Microsoft has announced 2025 as the ‘Year of the Frontier Firm’ and is advancing the idea of a new type of organisation powered by ‘hybrid’ teams of humans and AI agents. Every employee will manage an AI agent within five years, suggests its research. According to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, ‘The current generation of business leaders will be the last one to manage human-only workforces.’
Are older workers in line to reap the workflow benefits that AI might bring? Not necessarily, according to new research by Brunel University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which looked at the intersection of AI and inclusive design. This study concluded that older employees are often left out of the design process, resulting in AI tools that fail to reflect their capabilities, aspirations or identities.
Beyond the workplace, AI’s potential to support independence and autonomy in older lives is without question. In Chicago recently, I watched a demo in which a designer photographed the contents of his fridge, uploaded several images to his AI, and asked it to propose a nutritious meal. The AI suggested apple pork chops and set out a step-by-step graphic guide to preparing the meal.
It isn’t hard to see how this might help people with mild cognitive decline. There are many other examples cited in research where AI can support health and wellbeing, despite ethical concerns of over data bias and privacy.
We are however, on the edge of developments in AI that could overshadow anything seen to date. In May 2025, OpenAI, the startup led by Sam Altman that developed ChatGBT, acquired the product design firm of Jonny Ive, Apple’s former design visionary responsible for the iPhone and iPad.
The alliance, which has captivated the tech world, promises a new hardware phase of AI. A prototype ‘AI companion’ is already in development that could replace today’s screen-based laptops and tablets – it’s a revolution in computing. All we know so far is that it is neither a phone nor glasses; neither is it worn on the body. Whatever physical form it takes, this version of AI will take us down a new path of human possibilities
And if it could do more to support people in older age, that really would be A1.
About the Author
Jeremy Myerson is Professor Emeritus in the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design, Royal College of Art, and an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing.
Opinions of the blogger is their own and not endorsed by the Institute
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