I love this collaboration that highlights everyone’s predictions and shows how they converge on the same themes. It's true that 2026 will be quite different.
The "Become Unpromptable" theme hitting across multiple creators says something. We're all arriving at the same conclusion from different angles... AI made content trivially easy, which means the content itself stopped being the valuable part.
Most creators use AI to generate more. But the leverage isn't volume. It's producing work you're proud of without the brutal timeline.
That's awesome Nick, indeed, that was the prime intent of bringing everyone's perspective together. They feel so aligned on these common themes. Really appreciate you contributing to it
There is so much gold in this article. I am saving it for future reference and also to see who was the most 'correct' come December. Thank you Dheeraj for bringing this together to perfectly. 🙏
Thank you so much Sam, indeed, it will be a great trackback in December on what all came up but like rarely the downside is positive in something and this is one such dimension where if anyone dive into will not be disappointed with the results regardless of plus or minus direction :) .. I will ensure to keep a track over 2026 for it and publish the end result.
AI is just a tool. A very useful tool, but a tool nonetheless. I refuse to stand by while careless humans abuse it.
The abuse isn't the tool. It's the laziness. Flooding feeds with beige content nobody asked for. Drowning out the signal with optimized noise. That's not AI's fault. That's ours.
Yes the more and more you learn AI, the more you start to appreciate what humans add and where we must be focusing our efforts on . I think as everyone's thoughts have come together into this article, many would get help from it and surely make the right decisions of where they should head by leveraging AI as a tool
Thank you so much for your contribution too. As Sam said, a lot of learning for many who want to look for what exactly shall they go after in 2026 and what they shall not miss.
What a banger of a post, Dheeraj! This is one post I can read multiple times this year. Amazing to see how you have assigned umbrella themes for AI bets, makes reading easy and understanding useful.
This article is a wonderful round table of top and some of my favourite AI writers. Happy to have been a part of it! ✨
Thank you so much @Raghav for participating in it and providing all your valuable insights. Yours deserved a dedicated theme so I ended up being a little asymmetrical. Instead of 5+5, I went ahead and added a dedicated theme just around the governance and compliance aspect because it is so crucial and in the time to come it's going to be very very important from the enterprise standpoint.
It's a similar pattern right? Been for a lot of cloud transformation projects in the past. Once you are into cloud as an enterprise, the next thing that you think about is more like "How do I govern it? How do I make it more compliant? How do I cost-optimize it? How do I make it resilient?" I think probably a similar story will be applied in time to come for AI and AI initiatives especially at the enterprise level
Yes, I governance and compliance is indeed important and something that needs to go hand-in-hand with AI innovation. Thanks for reflecting this perspective uniquely :)
Thanks for contributuing. This is my first ever collab and I am humbled to see so many of you being welcoming and helping with all your contributions. Proves the metal of the platform itself.
This turned out very well, Dheeraj! Congratulations!! I'm glad to contribute my insights here -- you've hit on something that creators can truly make use of.
Thanks Jenny. I'm glad you were able to find my YouTube channel. It's just starting up so I'm really excited about both Substack and the YouTube. I'm so glad that you like the clear explanation on the latest video about Claude Code to Chrome. It means a lot to me especially coming from someone like you who understand Claude Code way better than many.
Super impressed with how this turned out and the way you put it all together, Dheeraj. I bet there's a lot of curious people who will find these useful.
Thank you for including me, Dheeraj! It's wild to see everyone's predictions laid out like this, with so many perspectives converging on similar truths.
A few things that hit me:
- The automation loop: What stuck with me is that if there's no clear thinking, no process to automate, then AI automates nothing. It multiplies what's already there. The "boring foundation work" before automation is the real unlock.
- Voice-first workflows. I've been pushing to use AI as a layer, and picking up voice-first tools feels like the next level. It's not just faster, it's a different way of working entirely.
- Vibe coding is still my biggest bet, but it's not really about the coding. It's about the barrier falling so more people can join.
What ties it all together: human at the center is what makes any of this actually move. AI handles the repetitive scaffolding. We bring the direction.
Thank you so much, Jenny, for participating in it. It has been a wild learning experience for me as well. So many perspectives, so many learnings. Well for that Voice first workflows, well I have become a fan of it not just building and writing code with it in Claude Code, rather using it all the time for most of the stuff, even for replying to text messages, writing articles, and thoughts in it. The best part is the context always stays when you are speaking to the AI, especially when you are wipe coding. When you are typing it, I used to filter a lot of things I would delete some of the stuff but all that gets stayed when you are talking directly. So it has proved to be very useful to me.
Thanks for compiling this, Dheeraj. This is why I keep hanging out here with Substack creators.
What I love about these takes: they’re not fear-mongering or declaring “X is dead.” They avoid hype and job-doom headlines.
Instead, most these takes focus on the right foundation: improving judgment, adding deliberate friction to slow down when it matters, thinking in systems, and highlighting your unique story.
Thank you so much for participating in it. It has been a real pleasure connecting with each one of you and learning all these perspectives (some of you are more of an inspiration for me). It helped me validate my beliefs as well. Synthesizing all this information helped me provide a place where people can just go through it and try to understand where they want to head out in time to come. Especially in 2026.
And you are absolutely right about the only thing that makes us differentiating from AI would be thinking in systems, improving judgment, adding that friction, all the points that you talked about which comes at the right foundation, or more like boring stuff .. hah ha
Thank you so much, Anna, for putting in the efforts and providing your insights as well. It was not possible without everyone participating in it. That makes me respect this Substack community more and more and want me to be here more and more throughout my day
Wow, what a great line up of predictions and authors, thank you for sharing! The rise of agentic workflows and content aware AI systems is definitely a big one for me. But one of the things that I think will become more prominent in 2026 but can get overlooked in the excitement, will be compliance and data security and privacy. With AI having access to a lot of potentially valuable and sensitive data where it comes from, where it gets stored and how, and who’s ultimately responsible if things don’t go to plan would be super important. I’ve been looking this in the context of trade offs between using commercial cloud LLMs vs local models, and I think the interest in this will only grow as both improve and evolve even further.
And great and very comprehensive overview, so thank you so much for compiling and sharing!
Yes Alena, you're absolutely right. I think in time to come, compliance, data security, privacy, governance, cost angles, visibility, as well as the optimization of cost would definitely play a super important role when it comes to the implementation of these AI initiatives .. I'm very happy that you found this content piece helpful. Thank you for sharing and spreading the word about it.
For sure they will! Compliance, data protection etc. sound very unsexy compared to the rest of AI topics, but they are so important, especially in highly regulated sectors like healthcare and law.
Amazing list of creators. Thank you for the opportunity Dheeraj. Love these kind of posts with multiple amazing creators in the same list!
Thank you Illia for contributing to it. Means a lot.
I love this collaboration that highlights everyone’s predictions and shows how they converge on the same themes. It's true that 2026 will be quite different.
Thanks for inviting me!
Thank you for participating and providing valuable insights
The "Become Unpromptable" theme hitting across multiple creators says something. We're all arriving at the same conclusion from different angles... AI made content trivially easy, which means the content itself stopped being the valuable part.
Most creators use AI to generate more. But the leverage isn't volume. It's producing work you're proud of without the brutal timeline.
The slop factories win on quantity. Let them.
Appreciate the feature, Dheeraj.
That's awesome Nick, indeed, that was the prime intent of bringing everyone's perspective together. They feel so aligned on these common themes. Really appreciate you contributing to it
There is so much gold in this article. I am saving it for future reference and also to see who was the most 'correct' come December. Thank you Dheeraj for bringing this together to perfectly. 🙏
Thank you so much Sam, indeed, it will be a great trackback in December on what all came up but like rarely the downside is positive in something and this is one such dimension where if anyone dive into will not be disappointed with the results regardless of plus or minus direction :) .. I will ensure to keep a track over 2026 for it and publish the end result.
It’s so cool to see all these predictions in one place and how they converge around several key themes. Thank you for pulling this together!
Glad it came out well, thanks to you for contributing to it.
I love how the most interesting AI people I follow talk more about humans than models. 🩷🦩
Thanks for putting this exciting post together Dheeraj!
AI is just a tool. A very useful tool, but a tool nonetheless. I refuse to stand by while careless humans abuse it.
The abuse isn't the tool. It's the laziness. Flooding feeds with beige content nobody asked for. Drowning out the signal with optimized noise. That's not AI's fault. That's ours.
Agreed. Judgement over tools. 🩷🦩
This: "talk more about humans than models"! so true
Yes the more and more you learn AI, the more you start to appreciate what humans add and where we must be focusing our efforts on . I think as everyone's thoughts have come together into this article, many would get help from it and surely make the right decisions of where they should head by leveraging AI as a tool
What a banger post Dheeraj! So many great insights, thank you ❤️
Thank you so much for your contribution too. As Sam said, a lot of learning for many who want to look for what exactly shall they go after in 2026 and what they shall not miss.
What a banger of a post, Dheeraj! This is one post I can read multiple times this year. Amazing to see how you have assigned umbrella themes for AI bets, makes reading easy and understanding useful.
This article is a wonderful round table of top and some of my favourite AI writers. Happy to have been a part of it! ✨
Thank you so much @Raghav for participating in it and providing all your valuable insights. Yours deserved a dedicated theme so I ended up being a little asymmetrical. Instead of 5+5, I went ahead and added a dedicated theme just around the governance and compliance aspect because it is so crucial and in the time to come it's going to be very very important from the enterprise standpoint.
It's a similar pattern right? Been for a lot of cloud transformation projects in the past. Once you are into cloud as an enterprise, the next thing that you think about is more like "How do I govern it? How do I make it more compliant? How do I cost-optimize it? How do I make it resilient?" I think probably a similar story will be applied in time to come for AI and AI initiatives especially at the enterprise level
Yes, I governance and compliance is indeed important and something that needs to go hand-in-hand with AI innovation. Thanks for reflecting this perspective uniquely :)
It’s so interesting to read about all the predictions for AI this year. Another exciting year ahead.
Thanks for featuring my take on this topic.
Thanks for contributuing. This is my first ever collab and I am humbled to see so many of you being welcoming and helping with all your contributions. Proves the metal of the platform itself.
💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻
This turned out very well, Dheeraj! Congratulations!! I'm glad to contribute my insights here -- you've hit on something that creators can truly make use of.
I am very happy too James how it turned out, thanks a lot for contributing. I hope it keeps helping more and more people in time to come.
Also, I didn't know you have a Youtube channel, thanks for sharing the clear explanation on connecting Claude Code to Chrome!
Thanks Jenny. I'm glad you were able to find my YouTube channel. It's just starting up so I'm really excited about both Substack and the YouTube. I'm so glad that you like the clear explanation on the latest video about Claude Code to Chrome. It means a lot to me especially coming from someone like you who understand Claude Code way better than many.
Super impressed with how this turned out and the way you put it all together, Dheeraj. I bet there's a lot of curious people who will find these useful.
Thank you for including me!
Thank you for including me, Dheeraj! It's wild to see everyone's predictions laid out like this, with so many perspectives converging on similar truths.
A few things that hit me:
- The automation loop: What stuck with me is that if there's no clear thinking, no process to automate, then AI automates nothing. It multiplies what's already there. The "boring foundation work" before automation is the real unlock.
- Voice-first workflows. I've been pushing to use AI as a layer, and picking up voice-first tools feels like the next level. It's not just faster, it's a different way of working entirely.
- Vibe coding is still my biggest bet, but it's not really about the coding. It's about the barrier falling so more people can join.
What ties it all together: human at the center is what makes any of this actually move. AI handles the repetitive scaffolding. We bring the direction.
Excited to see what everyone builds this year.
Thank you so much, Jenny, for participating in it. It has been a wild learning experience for me as well. So many perspectives, so many learnings. Well for that Voice first workflows, well I have become a fan of it not just building and writing code with it in Claude Code, rather using it all the time for most of the stuff, even for replying to text messages, writing articles, and thoughts in it. The best part is the context always stays when you are speaking to the AI, especially when you are wipe coding. When you are typing it, I used to filter a lot of things I would delete some of the stuff but all that gets stayed when you are talking directly. So it has proved to be very useful to me.
Thanks for compiling this, Dheeraj. This is why I keep hanging out here with Substack creators.
What I love about these takes: they’re not fear-mongering or declaring “X is dead.” They avoid hype and job-doom headlines.
Instead, most these takes focus on the right foundation: improving judgment, adding deliberate friction to slow down when it matters, thinking in systems, and highlighting your unique story.
Those are what matter most!
Thank you so much for participating in it. It has been a real pleasure connecting with each one of you and learning all these perspectives (some of you are more of an inspiration for me). It helped me validate my beliefs as well. Synthesizing all this information helped me provide a place where people can just go through it and try to understand where they want to head out in time to come. Especially in 2026.
And you are absolutely right about the only thing that makes us differentiating from AI would be thinking in systems, improving judgment, adding that friction, all the points that you talked about which comes at the right foundation, or more like boring stuff .. hah ha
Great work synthesizing all these perspectives, Dheeraj! So much to consider here and learn from. Thank you for including me!
Thank you so much, Anna, for putting in the efforts and providing your insights as well. It was not possible without everyone participating in it. That makes me respect this Substack community more and more and want me to be here more and more throughout my day
Wow, what a great line up of predictions and authors, thank you for sharing! The rise of agentic workflows and content aware AI systems is definitely a big one for me. But one of the things that I think will become more prominent in 2026 but can get overlooked in the excitement, will be compliance and data security and privacy. With AI having access to a lot of potentially valuable and sensitive data where it comes from, where it gets stored and how, and who’s ultimately responsible if things don’t go to plan would be super important. I’ve been looking this in the context of trade offs between using commercial cloud LLMs vs local models, and I think the interest in this will only grow as both improve and evolve even further.
And great and very comprehensive overview, so thank you so much for compiling and sharing!
Insightful points, Alena!
Yes Alena, you're absolutely right. I think in time to come, compliance, data security, privacy, governance, cost angles, visibility, as well as the optimization of cost would definitely play a super important role when it comes to the implementation of these AI initiatives .. I'm very happy that you found this content piece helpful. Thank you for sharing and spreading the word about it.
For sure they will! Compliance, data protection etc. sound very unsexy compared to the rest of AI topics, but they are so important, especially in highly regulated sectors like healthcare and law.
Thank you again for sharing great content!