University of Kwazulu-Natal

What Does 2026 Have In Store For Ai We Asked Chat Ainave

Bonisiwe Shabane
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what does 2026 have in store for ai we asked chat ainave

The future of AI, according to AI itself When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. In the final stretch of 2025, it became increasingly clear that artificial intelligence had become invisible yet influential infrastructure, as much a novelty toy as a novelty. People are using it like spreadsheets or plumbing, to move things around, combine and analyze information, and clean things up. But what do some of the most popular AI models think will happen next?

I asked ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, three of the best-known and widely used AI chatbots, to predict what everyday life with AI might look like in 2026. I tried to get them to stick to more realistic opportunities. I asked ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, three of the best-known and widely used AI chatbots, to predict what everyday life with AI might look like in 2026. and not predictions of the singularity, utopian fantasies, or alien encounters mediated by AI diplomats, just plausible extrapolations. Each model had their own ideas, with some unsurprising overlap. But the sometimes overt, and sometimes subtle consequences of AI described made it clear that, as far as the AI chatbot models are concerned, they aren't going to fade away any time soon.

In 2025, AI brought us new models that were far more capable of research, coding, video and image generation and more. AI models could now use heavy amounts of compute power to "think," which helped deliver more complex answers with greater accuracy. AI also got some agentic legs, meaning it could go out onto the internet and do tasks for you, like plan a vacation or order a pizza. Despite these advancements, we might still be far off from artificial general intelligence, or AGI. This is a theoretical future when AI becomes so good that it's indistinguishable from (or better than) human intelligence. Right now, an AI system works in a vacuum and doesn't really understand the world around us.

It can mimic intelligence and string words together to make it sound like it understands. But it doesn't. Using AI daily has shown me that we still have a ways to go before we reach AGI. Read more: CNET Is Choosing the Best of CES 2026 Awards As the AI industry reaches monstrous valuations, companies are moving quickly to meet Wall Street demands. Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and others are throwing trillions in training and infrastructure costs to usher in the next technological revolution.

While the spend might seem absurd, if AI does truly upend how humanity works, then the rewards could be enormous. At the same time, as revolutionary as AI is, it constantly messes up and gets things wrong. It's also flooding the internet with slop content -- such as amusing short-form videos that may be profitable but are seldom valuable. Humanity, which will be the beneficiary or sufferer of AI, deserves better. If our survival is literally at stake, then at the very least, AI could be substantively more helpful, rather than just a rote writer of college essays and nude image generators. Here are all the things that I, as an AI reporter, would like to see from the industry in 2026.

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. 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. When OpenAI declared a “code red” this month to refocus its teams on competing with Google, I couldn’t help but think back to December three years ago when the companies’ roles were reversed. Google was the one blasting the sirens to catch up to OpenAI. What followed the next month, in January 2023, were the first sweeping layoffs in Google’s history. “A difficult decision to set us up for the future,” as the company described it at the time. I wonder whether the ChatGPT developer could make similar workforce cuts early next year.

This speculation inspired me to come up with a whole set of predictions about what might come in the year ahead. Here’s a look at six of the ideas, fine-tuned with the real intelligence of WIRED colleagues. Communities across the world are fighting the construction of data centers. In the US, many activists are organizing on social media using tools such as Facebook Groups. The Chinese and Russian governments continue to exploit social media to disseminate disinformation masquerading as real news and authentic opinion. Slowing data center development in the US would be a boon for China and Russia, which are both seeking to surpass the US in industrial and military AI capabilities.

Austin Wang, a researcher at the nonprofit think tank RAND who has studied China-controlled propaganda farms, says there’s no signs of concerning activity right now. “Many newly established anti-data-center pages seem controlled by real US citizens so far,” Wang says. But as the anti-data-center fervor picks up, China and Russia could try to pile on to the grassroots organizing. And the work has gotten even easier thanks to AI that can quickly generate images and videos to rile up people on social media.

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