Last year, AI companies struck multibillion-dollar deals to build out AI infrastructure. In 2026, as this new computing power starts coming online, experts say we’ll begin to see whether that investment pays off.
1. Advancing science
In November, California startup Edison Scientific said its system, Kosmos, which combs existing scientific literature for new insights, has not only replicated human discoveries but also turned up new ones—like evidence that aging brain cells in Alzheimer’s may tag themselves with signals telling the brain’s cleanup system to dispose of them. The Trump Administration’s Genesis Mission, a Manhattan Project–style initiative, also aims to use AI to advance science. But what counts as an autonomous discovery may be contested. We may be far from a discovery that “we can very confidently say a human would not have done that,” says Edward Parker, a physical scientist at think tank Rand Corp. He expects a “messy middle ground” in which AI assists human researchers more than it discovers on its own.
2. AI shops for you
This year could see many shoppers skip not only physical stores but also websites to buy directly inside chatbots. Forecasters on the online prediction platform Metaculus put a 95% chance on a major company running an AI shopping agent that completes over 100,000 transactions by the end of 2026. “They’ll clear that very, very quickly,” says Tyler Cowen, an economist at George Mason University. The groundwork has already been laid. Last April, Amazon began testing an agent that makes purchases within the site. In September, Open-AI started allowing users to buy from U.S. Etsy sellers within ChatGPT. AI-facilitated shopping could reshape consumer behavior as e-commerce did before it, offering companies like OpenAI a new revenue stream in the process.
3. Companions go mainstream
As the year progresses, it will become better understood “that people develop real and meaningful relationships with these technologies,” predicts Kate Darling, author of The New Breed: How to Think About Robots. Robust research shows people treat machines as if they’re alive, even when they know they’re not. As adoption increases, “that’s going to explode,” she says. Dmytro Klochko, CEO of AI-companion company Replika, expects people will use one AI for productivity and another for emotional connection. Companions are distinct from models like ChatGPT, he says, because they’re designed to proactively engage people. “What we care about is people getting happier,” he says. “Whether or not it’s good, it’s happening.”
4. More political attention
AI will “play a larger, more palpable role on the world stage” this year, says Dean Ball, primary drafter of America’s AI Action Plan. Ball, who has since left the White House, predicts that AI could be a top-five issue in the midterm elections—amid concern about issues like data centers increasing electricity prices and mental-health harms.
Alex Bores, a New York State assembly member working on AI legislation, expects the technology will remain a bi-partisan issue. The tech is evolving faster than political parties can create consensus, and people already feel its impacts in their communities, he says. Bores believes that 2026 will be a pivotal year for U.S. AI governance, as lobbyists angle to prevent regulation, even as the systems and the companies building them both become more powerful.
