2025 will be the year of ‘Industrial AI’

• Automation, aviation & energy transition create ideal environment for AI
• Trifecta of 5G, cloud  AI is turning theory of autonomy into industrial reality

The buzz around artificial intelligence is palpable – turn on your phone today and it won’t be long before you are fed the next big AI-related story. In only a couple of years we have grown accustomed to AI helping us complete simple everyday tasks – from getting restaurant recommendations to editing selfies.

Yet these capabilities sit at the very tip of the AI iceberg, merely scratching the surface of what this paradigm-shifting technology can achieve. Dig deeper and AI is set to transform economies on a global scale. It is going to reshape the way entire industries operate and redefine the nature of work within these sectors.

If the past few years have been about AI permeating everyday life, 2025 is going to be the year of AI for industries – and we will witness a radical acceleration of the journey to industrial autonomy as a result.

 

The AI opportunity across three compelling megatrends

The difference between industrial automation (where we are today) and autonomy (where we are going) is key to understanding this opportunity. While automation involves machines following pre-programmed instructions, autonomy leverages AI to enable systems to adapt and make decisions in dynamic conditions.

The path to full autonomy may be an incremental one for most industries, but many are already rapidly accelerating AI investments in pursuit of it. AI has immense transformative potential in almost all business areas, and companies are placing big bets to enable new ways of working, drive new business models and unlock new routes to growth.

We view global industry through the lens of three compelling megatrends – automation, the future of aviation, and the energy transition. Across all three megatrends, there is already a large installed base of highly connected technology and vast amounts of data that – with the right tools in place – create the perfect environment for AI to thrive.

AI can move us closer to energy security by dynamically controlling an increasingly complex and diverse energy mix and identifying inefficiencies across industrial operations in real-time.

In aviation, AI is a critical enabler of connected aircraft and, in the future, of autonomous flight that is central to a rapidly scaling advanced air mobility sector.

AI is also powering the operator copilots and predictive maintenance systems needed to maximize the safety and operational stability of complex, automated industrial plants.

These outcomes are becoming increasingly important to bridge the demand-supply gap of technologically skilled workers available to support industrial growth. The problem is getting worse, either as skilled workers retire with fewer fully skilled workers available to replace them or as economies scale rapidly without a skilled industrial talent pool that can keep pace.

 

AI-enabled autonomous industrial operations can directly address the skills shortage. Not by eliminating workers but by providing AI-powered tools that can train and upskill them, helping even inexperienced workers perform like seasoned experts and loosening one of the binding constraints to growth.

AI will change the nature of industrial roles to make them more strategic, while allowing tomorrow’s workforce to jump quickly into jobs that they’ll find more challenging and rewarding, enabled by the power of new technologies at their fingertips. It is imperative that workers are equipped with the tools and the learning opportunities to embrace AI in their jobs and be prepared to explore its potential to avoid being left behind.

 

The ‘technology trifecta’

Another driver is that, until recently, the huge volume of industrial data that has been growing exponentially over the past decade has largely been locked within local machine loops.

Put simply – the technologies to free it from its silos, aggregate and analyze it in one single place have not existed. Industrial datasets can be vast and lack the connectivity to transfer them, large repositories to store them, and powerful data processing capabilities to convert them into actions.

This is what we call the ‘technology trifecta’ of 5G, cloud and AI, and it is turning the theory of autonomy into an industrial reality. By bringing these elements together, industrial companies are now finally able to leverage the full extent of their operational data to make every day their best day of production.

Their success will be determined by the ability to connect their Operational Technology (OT) – the patchwork of physical sensors, systems and controllers within a typical industrial operation – with the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure at a large scale. And, by connecting their OT in this way, they will also need to make the right cybersecurity investments to ensure their entire OT and IT infrastructure is secured from increasingly sophisticated threats.

The right partnerships for AI-led transformation 

These technical hurdles can be solved today through cross-industry partnership on AI. That is why we are already working closely with some of the world’s leading firms in the areas of connectivity, cloud and AI to bring the right solutions to market.

For example, Honeywell Forge, our IOT platform, transforms data into insights across virtually any industrial operation. To help achieve this, the platform can harness the power of Microsoft Azure’s cutting-edge cloud and AI capabilities to help operational workers identify opportunities across digitalization, energy optimization, asset reliability, OT cybersecurity, and building efficiency. 

In another example, we recently announced a collaboration with Google to bring its Gemini Large Language Model and Vertex, Google Cloud’s AI platform, together with enterprise-wide industrial data from Honeywell Forge. This convergence of tools and data supports the rapid upskilling of a remote workforce and enables predictive maintenance – which reduces downtime and increases productivity.

We are also expanding partnerships across semiconductors and technology architecture – working with leaders including NXP and Qualcomm to ensure AI can be enabled at the edge across a wide range of applications from refineries to warehouses and even aircraft cockpits.

To complete the ecosystem we are adding the advanced capabilities of telecommunications providers like Verizon, to leverage their 5G capabilities for the transfer of large datasets from edge-to-cloud.

Such partnerships are important because they combine deep domain and data expertise across industries with the very latest technologies across the ‘trifecta’ to finally make industrial AI accessible.

Industrial businesses around the world are now poised to turbocharge the path to autonomy, and in 2025 we will see bold bets made in industrial AI technologies that are going to radically increase productivity, improve efficiency and unlock much-needed growth.

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Anant Maheshwari is President and CEO Global Regions, Honeywell