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After three years of rapid growth and rising valuations, the AI industry enters 2026, with some of the euphoria giving way to difficult questions.
Here’s a look at what it’s all about:
– Bubble burst? –
Money is being poured into artificial intelligence, with spending expected to reach more than $2 trillion worldwide in 2026, according to consulting firm Gartner.
But concern is growing. Stock markets are closely watching tech giants Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Nvidia, as well as start-ups like OpenAI, as they fear a speculative bubble.
Several major investors – including the Japanese SoftBank and Peter Thiel – sold Nvidia shares in mid-November.
“No company will be immune, including us,” warned Google boss Sundar Pichai.
Still, Nvidia reported “extraordinary” demand for its chips, suggesting the fever is continuing.
– Jobs at risk? –
The debate about whether AI will destroy jobs continues, but there are still no answers.
“The AI phenomenon is here and it’s affecting how companies think about the workforce,” said Federal Reserve Vice Chair Philip Jefferson.
True AI believers believe that employment will change so much that universal income will be necessary.
Most forecasts assume a gradual change. McKinsey predicts that 30 percent of U.S. jobs could be automated by 2030, with 60 percent potentially undergoing significant change.
Gartner analysts predict that AI will create more jobs than it will eliminate by 2027.
– Superintelligence now? –
AI innovations raise the specter of super-intelligent machines like those in science fiction.
Anthropic founder Dario Amodei believes the next level of AI could arrive in 2026 and become smarter than Nobel Prize winners.
This artificial general intelligence (AGI) will operate at a higher level than any other human, he said.
OpenAI boss Sam Altman said his ChatGPT maker could create a “legitimate AI researcher” capable of discovery by early 2028.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent hundreds of millions of dollars hiring researchers in 2025 to achieve AGI.
But Meta’s outgoing chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, calls talk of producing AI “geniuses” in a data center “complete nonsense.”
– Media is facing a tidal wave –
Generative AI represents “the biggest transformation in the information ecosystem since the printing press,” consultant David Caswell told AFP.
Traditional media faces threats from chatbots and Google’s AI overviews that replay content without users visiting the original sites, resulting in lost traffic and revenue.
Survival options include becoming high-value products like The Economist; implementation of blocking techniques; or seeking compensation through lawsuits or partnerships, as the New York Times, Associated Press and AFP have done.
