Reading: 

• World Economic Forum, Scaling AI sustainably: 4 urgent priorities. This article reviews four key ways to look at the future of AI through the lens of sustainability.

• MIT Sloan, Five Trends in AI and Data Science for 2025. This key piece breaks down what areas of AI of going to grow the most over the year.

• Harvard Business Review, What Is Agentic AI, and How Will It Change Work? Breaks down what exactly agentic AI is in a simple way.

• The Hill, Energy Department scientists participate in ‘AI Jam’ with OpenAI, Anthropic, outlines the 1,000 Scientist AI Jam, where scientists from all the national labs, including Berkeley Lab, gathered to discuss ways to  harness the advancing technology for science and national security purposes. Also, you can read Open AI's blog post about the event.

Videos: 

• IBM Technology, AI Trends for 2025 is a quick video giving a high-level view of major AI trends to keep an eye on this year.

• Bernard Marr has a short video called, What is Agentic AI which should be followed by What Is The Difference Between Generative AI And Agentic AI? for a quick overview.

• The Economist, How AI is Revolutionizing Science, delves into the transformative role of AI in modern scientific research.

While we aren't featuring any new tools at this time, continue to use and get acquainted with all the tools offered as part of CBORG, the Lab's sanctioned AI portal. 

We also suggest adding your deets to the BLAM! Announcement page as we will share any new findings or tools we think are worth checking out! 

This week’s challenge is all about the future and how to think about AI and your job.

Try this prompt:

“Act as a career advisor - interview me about my job and suggest upskill projects to ensure I still have a job in 3 years after AI permeates everything - ask me three questions (one at a time), and then provide a list of recommendations after I've answered all of them.”

Now commit to doing at least one of those suggestions before your next PMP!

Although the BLAM! six-week training is ending this week, we’re still planning some great AI webinars this year, so make sure to subscribe to the BLAM Calendar to see the new events planned for over the year.

NOTE:  All webinars are recorded with links posted in chat a few hours after the webinar. All past webinar recordings are available here.

Tuesday March  2-3pm - For Coders, join Tim Fong in his Coder webinar as he walks you through how to modify the code and make your own feature in Omni Engineering. 

Wednesday March 5th 11AM - Noon - Coders Office Hours - Stop by and get answers to your questions about developing with LLMs.

Wednesday March 5th Noon - 1PM - Webinar featuring Berkeley Lab IT experts to discuss their thoughts on the future of AI at the Lab and beyond.

A bit more details on Agentic AI, which is one of the biggest AI trends to keep an eye on:

• TEDX Sydney Salon Video, AI agents: The scientist's new superpower featuring Stefan Harrer 

• London Futurist podcast, AI Agents: Challenges Ahead for AI Agents Ahead of Mainstream Adoption with Tom Davenport

• Video from IBM Technology, What is Agentic RAG

• Towards Data Science, The Future of Data: How Decision Intelligence is Revolutionizing Data

While we aren't featuring any new tools at this time, continue to use and get acquainted with all the tools offered as part of CBORG, the Lab's sanctioned AI portal. 

We also suggest adding your deets to the BLAM! Announcement page as we will share any new findings or tools we think are worth checking out! 

With our growing understanding of AI, tasks we once thought were far too complex for AI to handle may become achievable within the next three years. This means we are only beginning to integrate AI into our work. Who knows what the future will bring? But with AI’s help, we can start brainstorming new ways to enhance productivity.

This is a two-part challenge:

Part 1: AI for Productivity

1. Make a list of the top three tasks in your job that you think AI could improve.

2. Ask AI if it can already assist with these tasks and how to implement AI solutions into your workflow.

3. If AI can help—try it out! Experiment and see how it enhances your productivity.

Part 2: AI & Upskilling

1. With AI’s help, create a list of skills you’d like to develop to stay aligned with the future of work.

2. Identify key takeaways—would this involve taking AI courses, learning to code, or improving data analysis skills?

3. Outline actionable steps to future-proof your role and stay ahead of AI-driven changes.

• New York Times, A.I. Is Prompting an Evolution, Not Extinction, for Coders

• DICE, How AI Will Impact Software Development in 2025 and Beyond

There are a ton of DLAB's Python classes starting next week. Check them out and register now for one of the DLAB classes. 

This week’s final webinar will focus on the challenge to add a feature to omni-engineer-lbl.  Make sure to attend this week's Tuesday afternoon webinar, which will feature a walk through demo.