⚡Contested
Scaling / LLMs
The dominant paradigm since 2020: more parameters, more data, more compute. Now approaching diminishing returns on core reasoning tasks — the central debate of the decade.
312 articlesOpenAIGoogle DeepMind
🌐Rising
World Models
Internal predictive representations of the world enabling planning and counterfactual reasoning. LeCun's JEPA is the leading architecture proposal. Gaining momentum rapidly.
87 articlesMeta FAIRGoogle DeepMind
🤖Accelerating
Embodied AI
Intelligence grounded in physical interaction with the world. Robots, dexterous manipulation, sim-to-real transfer. Figure AI, 1X, and Physical Intelligence leading commercialization.
145 articlesFigure AIPhysical Intelligence
🧩Niche
Neuro-Symbolic
Combining neural pattern recognition with symbolic reasoning and formal logic. Tackles compositionality, systematic generalization, and causal inference.
👥Active
Multi-Agent
Societies of AI agents coordinating, competing, and specializing. Foundations for AI-driven economies, scientific collaboration, and emergent collective intelligence.
108 articlesOpenAIMicrosoft Research
🔬Breakthrough
AI for Science
AlphaFold changed biology. AlphaGeometry changed math. AI is now a peer tool in every scientific domain — materials, climate, drug discovery, physics.
94 articlesGoogle DeepMindMicrosoft Research
🏋️Core
RL & Agents
Reinforcement learning from human feedback underpins every frontier model. Pure RL agents demonstrate reasoning through search. RLHF, RLAIF, and process reward models.
201 articlesOpenAIAnthropic
💡Long-term
Neuromorphic / HW
Brain-inspired computing: spiking neural networks, analog chips, in-memory computing. Intel Loihi, IBM NorthPole. Targeting 1000× energy efficiency gains.
41 articlesIntel LabsIBM Research