University of Kwazulu-Natal

Ai In 2026 The Year Everything Gets Real

Bonisiwe Shabane
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ai in 2026 the year everything gets real

Two quick notes before we get to today’s article: There’s one week left to apply for a Tarbell Fellowship and potentially become the next Kai Williams! It’s is a fellowship program for people who want to become journalists covering AI. Understanding AI is participating again in 2026, along with media outlets like NBC News, The Guardian, Bloomberg, and the Verge. Click here to apply—the deadline is January 7. Thanks to everyone who contributed to GiveDirectly!

Because my readers gave more than $20,000, my wife and I donated an additional $10,000. 2025 has been a huge year for AI: a flurry of new models, broad adoption of coding agents, and exploding corporate investment were all major themes. It’s also been a big year for self-driving cars. Waymo tripled weekly rides, began driverless operations in several new cities, and started offering freeway service. Tesla launched robotaxi services in Austin and San Francisco. What will 2026 bring?

We asked eight friends of Understanding AI to contribute predictions, and threw another nine in ourselves. We give a confidence score for each prediction; a prediction with 90% confidence should be right nine times out of ten. This article was featured in the Think newsletter. Get it in your inbox. A year in tech can feel like a decade anywhere else. Think about it: a year ago, we were discussing how ChatGPT wasn’t able to count the number of “r”s in “strawberry.” Reasoning models from Chinese frontier labs (like DeepSeek-R1) hadn’t taken the world by...

Claude’s dedicated coding agent didn’t exist yet. IBM’s Granite 3.0 had only just arrived. And the agent conversation was only beginning: MCP had just gained traction in the spring, with a notable endorsement from Sam Altman. Meanwhile, in the world of infrastructure, chips and compute resources were becoming scarce, giving new territories a competitive advantage. Artificial intelligence (AI) experimentation is ending. As 2026 approaches, industry leaders are sending a clear message: The days of flashy demos and pilot programs are over.

What’s coming instead is a reckoning — one that will separate companies building sustainable AI systems from those merely chasing headlines. “In 2026, the conversation shifts from flashy demos to real responsibility,” says Ariel Katz, CEO of Sisense. “Enterprises want to know how AI makes decisions, where the data comes from, and who is in control when an agent takes action.” The shift from curiosity to accountability marks a fundamental transformation in how businesses approach AI. After years of treating AI as an innovative playground, companies are waking up to a stark reality: trust and governance matter more than technological prowess. The foundation for this transformation is already being laid through massive computational infrastructure.

Tom Traugott, senior vice president of emerging technologies at EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure, describes what he calls the “second wave” of AI innovation—one driven not by new algorithms but by the arrival of unprecedented computing... Artificial intelligence has had a blockbuster run. In just a few years, we’ve gone from novelty chatbots to AI systems that write production code, drive cars, and sit inside core enterprise workflows. If 2025 was the year AI proved it could scale, 2026 will be the year it’s tested by reality. After reviewing expert forecasts, market data, legal trends, and real-world deployments, one theme stands out: AI will keep improving fast—but its economic and societal impacts will arrive more gradually than the loudest predictions suggest. This article breaks down well-researched predictions for AI in 2026, combining technical progress, business outcomes, legal shifts, and cultural reactions—written in plain English, grounded in evidence, and designed to help you separate signal from...

Before diving into individual predictions, it’s important to set expectations. AI progress is real. Model capabilities are rising. Investment is exploding. But history tells us that general-purpose technologies—like electricity, the internet, or cloud computing—take years to reshape productivity, not months. 1 hour ago • by Damien Ng in Financial Services

December 9, 2025 in Artificial Intelligence AI is reshaping cybersecurity, arming both hackers and defenders. Learn how to stay ahead in the fast-evolving AI cybersecurity arms race.... December 1, 2025 • by Tomoko Yokoi in Artificial Intelligence Vibe coding lets anyone build apps in plain English using AI, unlocking innovation and speed—but businesses must manage security, compliance, and quality risks.... AI is entering a new phase, one defined by real-world impact.

After several years of experimentation, 2026 is shaping up to be the year AI evolves from instrument to partner, transforming how we work, create and solve problems. Across industries, AI is moving beyond answering questions to collaborating with people and amplifying their expertise. This transformation is visible everywhere. In medicine, AI is helping close gaps in care. In software development, it’s learning not just code but the context behind it. In scientific research, it’s becoming a true lab assistant.

In quantum computing, new hybrid approaches are heralding breakthroughs once thought impossible. As AI agents become digital colleagues and take on specific tasks at human direction, organizations are strengthening security to keep pace with new risks. The infrastructure powering these advances is also maturing, with smarter, more efficient systems. These seven trends to watch in 2026 show what’s possible when people join forces with AI. Autonomous AI agents will handle complex tasks, freeing humans for creativity, strategy, and oversight roles. Hyperautomation and ROI-focused AI will drive operational efficiency, measurable business impact, and trustworthy enterprise adoption.

Human-AI collaboration requires upskilling, governance, and ethical frameworks to ensure equitable and sustainable AI ecosystems. Artificial intelligence is no longer a futuristic promise, but rather the foundation layer on which the businesses, societies, and the world of 2026 are built. After the hype, the crucial questions will have answers in the coming year, with a clear distinction between the game-changing and the hype-creating. What follows are the big questions shaping AI’s evolution and its implications for society, work, and innovation. Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2026. Read them in this 18th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.

By Neeraj Mathur, Vice President of AI Solutions Engineering at Kognitos Over the past year, I have watched employees who once feared automation discover something surprising. AI is not nearly as smart as they imagined. It cannot replace their experience or intuition, but it can take away the repetitive parts of their jobs that drain time and energy. When people begin to experiment with AI instead of resisting it, the relationship changes. It becomes less about replacement and more about collaboration.

In 2026, that human realization will define which organizations succeed. The companies that thrive will not be those that automate the fastest. They will be the ones that bring their people into the journey early, empower them to use AI in their own workflows, and make trust the foundation of every transformation. The story of AI adoption is unfolding at two different speeds. Large enterprises in sectors like healthcare, finance, and manufacturing have spent the last few years building the foundations. They have the budgets, data, and governance frameworks, but progress has been cautious.

For them, 2025 was a year of building capability. 2026 will be a year of real deployment and scale.

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