THE YEAR AI WENT MAINSTREAM

Talal Shaikh, Associate Professor, Heriot-Watt University Dubai

In 2025, artificial intelligence crossed a threshold that had little to do with model size or benchmark scores. This was the year AI stopped feeling like a product and started behaving like infrastructure. It became embedded across work, education, government, media, and daily decision-making. The shift was subtle but decisive. AI moved from something people tried to something they assumed would be there.

From my position at Heriot-Watt University Dubai, what stood out most was not a single breakthrough, but a convergence. Multiple model ecosystems matured at the same time. Autonomy increased. Regulation caught up. Infrastructure scaled. And nations began to treat intelligence itself as a strategic asset.

From one AI story to many

For several years, public attention clustered around a small number of Western firms, most visibly OpenAI and Google. In 2025, that narrative fractured.

Google’s Gemini models became deeply embedded across search, productivity tools, Android, and enterprise workflows. Their strength lay not only in conversation, but in tight coupling with documents, spreadsheets, email, and live information. AI here was designed to live inside existing habits.

At the same time, Grok, developed by xAI, took a different path. With real-time access to public discourse and a deliberately opinionated tone, it reflected a broader shift in design philosophy. AI systems were no longer neutral interfaces. They carried values, styles, and assumptions shaped by their creators. That diversity itself was a sign of maturity.

By the end of 2025, users were no longer asking which model was best. They were choosing systems based on fit, trust, integration, and intent.

The rise of agentic AI

If generative AI defined earlier years, agentic AI defined 2025.

In 2023, most people experienced AI as a chatbot. You asked a question, it replied, and the interaction ended. In 2025, that interaction became continuous. An agent does not simply respond. It reads context, sets sub-goals, uses tools, checks results, and decides what to do next.

A chatbot drafts an email. An agent reads the full thread, looks up past conversations, drafts a response, schedules a meeting, and follows up if no reply arrives. A chatbot explains an error. An agent runs tests, fixes the issue, commits code, and opens a pull request.

This transition from response to agency turned AI from a helpful assistant into an operational participant. It also shifted risk. As systems gained the ability to act, questions of oversight, auditability, and failure containment moved from academic debate into everyday management.

A shift I saw first in the classroom

This change was not abstract for me. I saw it unfold directly in my classrooms.

Only a short time ago, many students dismissed AI-assisted coding with a familiar phrase: “It hallucinates.” They were not wrong. Early tools often produced code that looked correct but failed logically. Students learned quickly that blind trust led to wasted hours.

In 2025, that language faded.

Students now approach AI differently. They no longer ask whether the model is correct. They ask why it produced a solution, where it might fail, and how to constrain it. In one recent lab, a student debugging a robotics control pipeline did not reject the AI output after a failed test. He used it to generate alternative hypotheses, compared execution traces, and isolated the fault faster than traditional trial and error would allow.

At one point, a student stopped and said, “It is not hallucinating anymore. It is reasoning, but only if I reason with it.”

That sentence captures 2025 better than any benchmark.

From skepticism to supervision, in industry

The same shift is visible among our alumni now working in software engineering, fintech, data science, and robotics. Several who once warned juniors not to trust AI code now describe it as a first-pass collaborator. They use it to scaffold architectures, surface edge cases, and speed up documentation, while keeping final judgment firmly human.

The concern is no longer hallucination. It is over-reliance.

AI moved from being treated as an unreliable shortcut to being treated as a junior colleague, fast, useful, and fallible, requiring supervision rather than dismissal.

Sovereign AI, two models of power

One of the clearest signals that AI went mainstream in 2025 was the divergence in how regions approached it.

In much of the West, the year was framed as a corporate contest. Product launches, market share, and valuation battles dominated headlines. Innovation moved fast, driven by competition between private firms.

In the Middle East, and particularly in the UAE, the framing was different. AI was treated as national infrastructure.

The UAE’s investment in sovereign models such as Falcon and Jais reflected a belief that intelligence, like water or electricity, must be secured, governed, and trusted within borders. This was not about isolation. It was about resilience, data sovereignty, and long-term capacity. Dependence without control came to be seen as a strategic risk.

In 2025, this idea matured. Sovereign AI stopped being a slogan and became a planning principle. While the West debated which company would win, the UAE focused on ensuring that the capability itself remained accessible, accountable, and locally anchored.

When culture embraced AI

Another signal of mainstream adoption arrived from outside the technology sector.

The strategic alignment between The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI marked a moment when AI entered the core of global culture. Disney does not adopt technologies lightly. Its value lies in storytelling, world-building, and intellectual property sustained over decades.

This move was not about automating creativity. It was about scale and continuity. Modern story worlds span films, series, games, theme parks, and personalised digital experiences. Managing that complexity increasingly requires intelligent systems that can assist across writing, design, localisation, and audience interaction.

When a company whose primary asset is imagination treats AI as foundational, it signals that intelligent systems are no longer peripheral to creative industries. They are becoming part of how stories are built, maintained, and experienced. In that sense, 2025 marked the moment AI became cultural infrastructure, not just technical tooling.

Work changed quietly

Another sign of mainstreaming was how little drama accompanied adoption. Professionals stopped announcing that they were using AI. They simply expected it.

Developers assumed code assistance and automated testing. Analysts assumed rapid summaries and scenario modeling. Marketers assumed content generation and performance analysis. Students assumed access, but outcomes increasingly depended on how well they could guide, verify, and critique what AI produced.

This created a new divide. Not between technical and non-technical people, but between those who could reason with AI and those who delegated thinking to it.

What this means for universities

For universities, 2025 closed the door on treating AI as optional.

Every discipline now intersects with intelligent systems. Engineers must understand ethics and regulation. Business graduates must understand automation and decision support. Creative fields must grapple with authorship and originality. Researchers must design methods that remain valid when AI is part of the workflow.

At Heriot-Watt University Dubai, this pushes us toward assessment that rewards reasoning over polish, and education that teaches students not just to use AI, but to supervise it.

The real shift

AI went mainstream in 2025, not because it became smarter, but because society reorganised around it. Multiple models coexisted. Agents acted with growing autonomy. Nations planned for sovereignty. Culture adapted. Classrooms recalibrated trust.

The next phase will not be defined by faster models alone. It will be defined by judgment.

That is the quieter, more demanding challenge left to us after the year AI went mainstream.