5 AI Engineering Trends Shaping 2024: Agents, Coding Tools, and the Rise of Small Models

2024 marks a year where AI software, especially AI coding tools, becomes increasingly mature and automated, while AI agents and small models gain prominence.

1. AI Agents

AI agents, built on large language models (LLMs), have become the hot topic of the year, with companies like LangChain launching LangGraph for highly controllable agents and LlamaIndex introducing Llama Agents as production‑grade knowledge assistants. Meta’s Llama Stack also provides reference APIs and libraries to help developers build agent applications.

2. AI Coding Tools

AI‑assisted coding is now commonplace; 76% of developers use or plan to use AI, citing time savings as the primary benefit, though only 23% feel it improves code quality. Tools such as JetBrains IDE AI features, Cursor, Zed AI, and Solver are highlighted, with GitHub Models enabling easy access to the latest generative models.

3. AI Engineer as a New Profession

The role of the AI engineer has solidified, requiring expertise in data pipelines, data quality, and model deployment. A learning roadmap illustrates the skills needed to become an AI engineer.

4. Small Models and Locally Hosted LLMs

Small language models (SLMs) like Google’s Gemma 2B and 7B offer cost‑effective alternatives for smaller enterprises, being easier to train, fine‑tune, and deploy. Their compact size also facilitates local hosting, enabling developers to run AI models on personal hardware.

5. Open‑Source AI

Debates continue over what constitutes open‑source AI, with Meta’s LLaMA model criticized for restrictive licensing and data access. The Open Source Initiative released a draft definition urging organizations to share data, source code, and model parameters to truly qualify as open‑source.

Conclusion

In 2024, AI coding tools and agents mature, small and locally‑hosted models rise, and the AI engineer role becomes essential, while discussions about open‑source AI persist, setting the stage for continued evolution into 2025.