AI Predictions, August 2026

For the past two months or so, I've been working on a variety of AI development projects rather than writing -- writing skills, plugins, workflows, and applications; testing and refining harnesses; and performing diligence or working with clients (hands-on work as well as brains-on work) as they think through where they're going with AI and how they're getting there. I've been down a lot of rabbit holes and talked to a lot of forward-thinking practitioners, and I have explored a lot of what is actually possible now by building things...and I've spent my "think-time" on what that all might actually mean going forward. Here's what I've come up with: 59 predictions in 17 categories around how the world of AI -- and the broader world in light of AI -- are changing. I'll write more deeply about many of these over the weeks ahead. Predictions Here's what's coming, in my not-so-humble opinion, based on what I'm seeing in client projects & diligence, conversations, and research. Each prediction is grouped by category and by time horizon (within 12 months / 1-3 years / 2-4 years / 3-5 years), with a confidence level and a falsification criteria (i.e., what I'd expect to observe if I'm wrong). Confidence isn't a measure of how much I want something to be true; it's a measure of how much variance I think exists in the outcome. I'd love your feedback on what I'm missing or where I'm missing the forest for the trees (or the boat entirely :D)! Any surprises for you? Organizational Structure & Delivery Model #1. Small Cross-Functional Pods Become the Standard for Software Development (2-4 years) The leading-edge/aspirational development team model will have moved from agile teams of 6-8 to AI-powered Pods of 2-3 (often product/development/deployment, sometimes SrDev/JrDev/Product). This prediction underpins many of the other predictions in this entire group -- most of the rest of the Org Structure & Delivery Model cluster assumes it holds. It's plausible for greenfield and startup