TECH PREDICTIONS FOR 2025
By Amer Hasan, CEO of minicabit
minicabit.com
A happy 2025 to you, described by the Chinese Zodiac as the Year of the Snake. Indeed, it could be a slippery year, navigating the various economic and political challenges in the UK and abroad.
As CEO of minicabit, Britain’s largest cab aggregator, this is coming up to my tenth year of aiming to predict the tech changes in our sector, always a difficult endeavour. However, I ended my predictions two years back with a mention of ChatGPT and the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) – from an incremental presence last year, it’s fair to say it will start to more visibly transform our everyday use of technology this year, in leisure and work. iPhone and Android operating systems will roll out features with AI embedded even deeper, for instance reading your calendars and emails to evolve into a quasi Personal Assistant, automatically scheduling/updating appoint- ments. But AI will also start to offer baseline business skills equivalent to work agents, called ‘agentic’ services. Examples include accounting packages, that automate basic bookkeeping for continual expense tracking, invoicing and compliance.
However, perhaps the most relevant area for the cab sector is with AI agents which can replace a lower level customer service agent with reading/responding to customer queries across live chat and, surprisingly, voice calls. Yes, we’re getting to the stage an AI bot can imitate a human voice to answer calls, complete with some charm, hesitation and even chuckles – whilst a discerning ear might still distinguish this from the real thing, the gap is closing. It’s fair to say Customer Service software will start to be transformed this year, potentially reducing staffing costs for cab operators – time will tell if/when job dispatch and negotiating with drivers will be fully managed by AI bots!
The other area that will start to be impacted by AI is how people access websites and apps. Google, for the first time since its launch over 25 years ago, is starting to face intense competition in its core offering, online search, where it has long commanded a 90% share amongst online search engines. AI-driven search from ChatGPT (and smaller rivals such as Perplexity and Anthropic) is seriously disrupting this, especially amongst younger generations, which gives the specific answer to queries rather than links to websites to find
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the answer themselves. Google is fighting back with its own AI search bot, Gemini, until recently a separate website and app – now it will start to blend Gemini within its main search form. And Google’s initiatives, such as a trial codenamed Project Mariner, will instantly complete forms for you across multiple websites, reducing the need for you to visit/book across different providers, for instance, for a travel itinerary. So navigating this change will be a key focus for all businesses this year.
Whilst AI will start to impact our industry’s back office, the ‘front end’, the cab driver that is, will escape its clutches at least for the next couple of years. Self-driving cars went through a hype cycle a few years back, only to face the squeeze of technological progress lagging the $billions of investments made into the sector. With General Motors subsequently shutting down its Cruise platform, this leaves Google-owned Waymo and Amazon-owned Zoox as the main players of scale (outside China) in the self-driving race…though things could change from this year. Tesla previewed its Cybercab vehicle last year which runs off its full self- driving software that is already deployed in its consumer cars. Tesla’s chief, Elon Musk (no stranger to hyperbole), is proclaiming that he can activate regular Tesla cars and Cybercabs onto an Uber-style ‘Tesla Network’ app initially in the US, for consumers and local fleets to own and rent out as they wish for cab services (akin to renting out your property on Airbnb). In theory, this could present a rival to Uber, disrupting them on cost and availability, though Uber is pitching this as another provider to offer in its own app – indeed, it already offers Waymo in select US cities, competing with them in others.
The one challenge to easily rollout an autonomous cab network is complying with regional differences in US transport regulations. With Musk cannily backing Trump into the White House, his bet is that Trump pushes for such regulations to be managed centrally, potentially expediting the rollout of autonomous cab services that could either impact or boost Uber (which itself has invested in UK autonomous software platform, Wayve).
All this said, history shows that AI can’t easily wipe out the premium appeal of personal service – lower quality coffee from vending machines hasn’t replaced demand for the higher quality offered by café baristas, and tour guides prevail despite the wealth of online information on a city. So far from making the cab driver extinct, those drivers and operators who sincerely strive to offer the best customer service can command a premium in the market…as it’s always been, and can always be.
JANUARY 2025 PHTM
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