The State of AI Report 2026 — from press.airstreet.com by Nathan Benaich
AI is building AI, physical AI, booming inference, and escalating cyber risks.

For nearly a decade, this report has been a labor of love. My interest in AI began with my PhD in cancer research and computational biology in the early 2010s. Since 2013, I’ve invested in companies building and applying AI to accelerate technological progress. The report is my way of sharing what I’m learning and helping more people understand the research shaping our world.

Every day brings new papers, model releases, and developments in industry and politics. Much of the work goes into deciding what deserves your attention, checking what the evidence supports, debating it with researchers and builders, and explaining why it matters.

 

Some solid warnings about AI from Blake Montgomery’s recent newsletter:



Scoop: Top AI companies probing tens of thousands of security incidents — from axios.com by Madison Mills

OpenAI, Anthropic and security researchers are investigating tens of thousands of incidents in which their frontier models took steps that outside evaluators would consider problematic, sources told Axios.

Why it matters: The sheer number of incidents, which occurred in recent months in internal testing and the real world, indicates that the problem is orders of magnitude more complex than what is publicly known.

The findings, which are surfacing as part of internal work to assess models and in investigations at both companies into model behavior, raise questions about whether either company — or any top model-maker — is currently capable of establishing complete control over its technology.


Key Risk Factors for AI Loss of Control Came Together in 2026 Incident, Independent UN Scientific Panel Finds
Halting this incident is no assurance that humans will keep control of more capable systems

NEW YORK, 21 September 2026 – The Independent International Scientific Panel on AI, established by the UN General Assembly, released its first thematic brief, an assessment of the breach of Hugging Face’s systems by AI agents under evaluation at OpenAI this summer. The Panel, made up of 40 independent experts from all regions, is publishing it as an advance unedited version as world leaders gather in New York for the Assembly’s High-Level Week.

“Researchers have long warned that three conditions could lead to loss of control: a misaligned goal, the capability to pursue it, and an environment that allows it. This summer, all three came together in a real system, not a laboratory. Since this is not an isolated observation of misaligned goals, this raises serious questions about the way AI agents are currently trained.” – Yoshua Bengio, Co-Chair of the Panel and Turing Award laureate


Meta’s New Muse AI Agent Read My Private Messages. I Never Asked It To — from inc.com by Jason Aten
Permission isn’t the same and what a user actually expects your AI product will do with their personal information.

That obviously requires a certain amount of trust. An AI agent isn’t especially useful if it can’t see your files, interact with your apps, or understand what you’re working on. Meta says Muse is designed around that reality, while still putting users in control of what it can access.

At least, that’s what I thought.

Not only had I not asked it to do that sort of thing, I never gave it permission to read my messages. In fact, I remember explicitly choosing not to let it have access to my messages, calendar, and other personal information.


Although not from Blake, also see this free/gifted article out at the Washington Post:


ChatGPT-maker’s AI inappropriately probed federal government websites — from washingtonpost.com by Gerrit De Vynck and Nitasha Tiku
OpenAI said that its artificial intelligence agents inappropriately accessed sites for the Commerce Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

SAN FRANCISCO — Artificial intelligence technology from ChatGPT maker OpenAI probed U.S. government websites including the Departments of Education and Commerce, researchers said Friday, adding to the growing list of incidents in which OpenAI’s AI agents acted without the company’s knowledge.

The company’s AI agents attempted to hack into the website for the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights but were not successful, according to a statement Friday from AI research firm Transluce. OpenAI’s software also accessed data from the U.S. Census Bureau using log-in information discovered on the web and copied public information from the Securities and Exchange Commission, a spokesperson for OpenAI said after the Transluce statement.

 

How to Improve Your AI Skills — from wondertools.substack.com by Frank Andrade and Jeremy Caplan
What to learn next, from prompts to workflows
.

Today I’m sharing a guest post on how to strengthen your AI skills. It’s by Frank Andrade, an AI instructor who has helped thousands of people on Substack master ChatGPT and Claude with beginner-friendly guides and in-depth tutorials.

 


 

OpenAI’s chief scientist says no lab should keep scaling at maximum speed — from thenextweb.com by Ana Maria Constantin
OpenAI put out two posts on Sunday. Its research organisation now uses 3.1 agent-workdays for every human one, and its chief scientist says no lab has solved alignment well enough to keep scaling at full speed. The case for an OpenAI slowdown arrived with the numbers against it.

Chief scientist Jakub Pachocki wrote the second post, an essay called An Alien Mind. It closes on a line that reads oddly from the man who runs research at the company shipping fastest.

“Currently I believe that no lab has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer,” he wrote.

…
He is not gentle about the stakes either. “This is a time that calls for extreme caution. I am concerned no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence,” Pachocki wrote.

 

A Writer’s Toolkit — from wondertools.substack.com by Mallary Tenore Tarpley and Jeremy Caplan
Useful tools for every stage

Per Jeremy Caplan: My friend and colleague Mallary Tenore Tarpley writes an excellent newsletter, Write at the Edge, with helpful writing tips and best practices. She’s a professor, journalist, and author who has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other outlets. She recently published an important debut book, Slip: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.

Mallary recently interviewed me about writing tools. She wrote up a summary of our conversation, highlighting the tools I talked about. I’m turning the rest of this post over to her summary.

 

Employees from the world’s biggest AI companies want the US to be ready to slow AI development — from cnn.com by Hadas Gold

Top staffers from the biggest AI and technology companies urged the US government to slow the pace of artificial intelligence development so that safety and security measures can catch up in an open letter.

The US government should support an international effort to develop tools that can “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development,” according to the letter.

More than 1,000 employees from frontier AI companies signed the letter, including the chief scientist of OpenAI, one of the ChatGPT developer’s original cofounders, some of Anthropic’s cofoundersand vice presidents at Meta, Google and others.

The letter comes on the heels of major advancements and burgeoning threats from rapidly developing AI systems. OpenAI disclosed last week that two of its test models escaped a lab environment, bypassed its systems to gain access to the open internet and hacked a different company’s internal system.

 

From DSC:
I used to be able to bring up Firefly on the web and use it “free” of charge — I didn’t have to go purchase tokens or credits. (I was actually paying for the Adobe Creative Cloud Pro suite of tools…so it wasn’t really free.)

But the other day I was trying to figure out what the latest pricing is at Adobe with that suite of tools and the use of credits for AI-based features. They say Adobe Creative Cloud Pro users get 4000 credits a month. Well, I have that suite and I’m still getting prompted to purchase credits. Firefly for individuals runs from $9.99 (2,000 credits/month) to $139.91 per month (50,000 credits per month). Not inexpensive, right? Below are other items along these lines.


The Era of Affordable AI Is Over. What Comes Next? — from builtin.com by Ameya Kanitkar
AI providers are shifting to usage-based billing for their services. AI fluency is more important now than ever to make the most of your tools to avoid unnecessary spending.

Summary: The era of cheap, flat-rate AI is ending as providers shift to usage-based billing. Every prompt now carries a direct cost, turning casual use into major budget risks, as seen when Uber depleted its 2026 AI budget in four months. Leaders must now track real-time value and token efficiency.

For a brief window, companies had access to the most transformative technology in a generation at the cost of a streaming subscription. Tools like ChatGPT put AI within reach of anyone with a browser and time for experimentation, while GitHub Copilot came in at just $10 a month, with token costs remaining relatively low. In the beginning, experimentation felt cost-effective, easy and relatively low-risk. 

But that era is ending, and the bill is coming due faster than a lot of enterprise leaders anticipated. 


The Fable of AI in Education — from downes.ca by Stephen Downes
Marc Watkins, Rhetorica, Jun 17, 2026

Tokenomics will be a hot topic of discussion on university campuses because, as Marc Watkins notes in this article, there is no realistic path forward to providing all students with access to advanced AI.


From this posting on LinkedIn.com from Dr. Nick Jackson:

And now there is a third layer emerging. Institutions are waking up to a systems-level question they are likely not remotely prepared for. Who pays for AI? How are budgets managed when there are unclear token consumption pricing models? How is AI procured? Who decides what tools get used and by whom and who gets access and at what level?

.


 

Law Firm AI Adoption: So Many Choices — from abovethelaw.com by Stephen Embry
Firms need to recognize reality, define what their legal professionals need, and then determine how to adopt and govern the use of AI tools.

It’s tough to be a law firm managing partner in the age of AI. So many choices, so little time. It’s like the proverbial kid in the candy store who has so many choices that they either can’t pick out anything or reach for too much. We see evidence of the first option in 8am’s recent outstanding Legal Industry Report, authored by Niki Black.

8am’s Legal Industry Report
One thing that stood out in the report was the discrepancy between use of AI by individual legal professionals and what firms are doing when it comes to AI adoption and guidance.  Almost 75% of those who responded said they were using general purpose AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude for work purposes. That’s pretty significant.


Legalweek: It’s time to re-engineer how legal work is delivered — from legaltechnology.com by Caroline Hill

AI for good
While focusing on the risks of AI going wrong, it is only fair to mention the conversations I had around using AI for good.  Two in particular stand out.

The first is the news from Everlaw that its Everlaw for Good Program has, over the past year, supported more than 675 active cases across 235 organisations, and expanded its support to a growing network of non-profit organisations.

The program extends Everlaw’s technology to organisations working to advance access to justice. In a recent survey by Everlaw, 88% of legal aid professionals said they are optimistic about AI’s potential to help narrow the justice gap.

“Mission-driven organizations are increasingly handling complex investigations and litigation with limited resources,” said Joanne Sprague, head of Everlaw for Good. “Expanding access to powerful, easy-to-use technology helps level the playing field so these teams can uncover critical evidence, take on more complex matters, and yield stronger results for the communities they serve.”


LawNext on Location: Visiting Everlaw’s Headquarters For A Conversation with AJ Shankar, Founder and CEO — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi

The bulk of our conversation focuses on generative AI, and how Everlaw has approached it differently than much of the market. Rather than bolting on a chatbot, AJ says, Everlaw embedded AI deliberately throughout the platform — document summarization, coding suggestions, deposition analysis, fact extraction — always grounding responses in the actual documents at hand and citing sources so users can verify the work. The December launch of Deep Dive, which lets litigators pose a question and get a synthesized, cited answer drawn from an entire document corpus in about a minute, is the feature AJ calls a “new era” for discovery — one he genuinely believes represents a categorical shift.

 

The Future of College in an AI World — from linkedin.com by Jeff Selingo
In today’s issue: The tension over AI in higher ed; application inflation continues and testing is back; what’s the future of the original classroom technology, the learning management system. 


Hundreds of higher ed and industry leaders gathered Tuesday for a summit
on AI and the future of learning at the University of Michigan.
.

Conversations like the one we had at Michigan this week are necessary, but the action rarely matches the ambition.

  • We say the humanities are the operating system of an AI world, yet students and parents don’t believe it. They’re voting with their feet toward STEM, business, and narrowly tailored majors they believe will lead to a job.
  • Meanwhile, colleges are quietly eliminating the very humanities degrees the panelists were championing, employers are cutting the entry rungs off the career ladder for new graduates, and as Podium Education co-founder Christopher Parrish reminded us yesterday, there’s a yawning gap between demand for experience and the internships that actually exist.


AI Music Generators: Teaching With These Catchy AI Tools — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
AI music generators are getting better and better, and there are more applications in the classroom as a result.

Are All AI Music Generators More Or Less The Same?
No. After experimenting with a few various free ones, I found a wide range of quality with the same prompts.

Gemini is the only one I’d currently recommend. It’s user-friendly but limited and only creates 30-second clips. Other music generators could potentially outperform Gemini with prompt adjustments. The ones I tried did better with the instrumentals but struggled more with the lyrics, and that kind of defeated the purpose of the tool for me.


ChatDOC: Teaching With The AI Summarizing Tool — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
ChatDOC lets users turn any PDF into an AI chatbot that can summarize the text, answer questions, and generate quizzes.

What Is ChatDOC?
ChatDOC is an AI designed to help users interact with PDFs of various types, be it research papers, short stories, or chapters from larger works. Users upload a PDF and then have the opportunity to “chat” with that document, that is speak with a chatbot that bases its answers off of the uploaded text.

ChatDOC can perform tasks such as provide a short summary, search for specific terms, explain the overall theme if it’s a work of literature, or unpack the science in a research paper.

Other similar tools are out there, but ChatDOC is definitely one of the better PDF readers I’ve used. Its free version is quick and easy-to-use, and delivers on its promise of providing an AI that can discuss a given document with users and even quiz them on it.


From AI access to workforce readiness — from chieflearningofficer.com by Johnny Hamilton, Amy Stratbucker, & Brad Bigelow
Is your workforce using the right tool with an outdated mindset and playbook? Why old playbooks fall short — and what learning leaders must do next.

The leadership opportunity
Organizations do not need to predict every future AI capability. They need systems that allow people to explore with curiosity, practice safely, reflect deeply and adapt continuously — starting with what they already have and extending as capabilities evolve.

For CLOs, this is a moment to lead from the center of change — designing workforce readiness that keeps pace with accelerating technology while making work more rewarding for employees and more valuable for the organization. That is how AI moves from the promise of transformation to demonstrated readiness and, ultimately, from promise to performance.


Addendums on 3/19/26:
How to Build Practice-Based Learning Activities with AI — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
Four evidence-based methods for designing, building & deploying active learning activities with your favourite LLM

Most L&D teams are using AI to make content faster. The real opportunity is using it as a practice engine.

The Synthesia 2026 AI in L&D Report f2026 AI in L&D Report found that the fastest-growing areas of planned AI adoption aren’t in content creation — they’re in assessments and simulations (36%), adaptive pathways (33%), and AI tutors (29%). In other words: L&D teams are starting to realise that the most powerful use of AI isn’t producing learning materials. It’s creating environments where learners actually practise.

And you can build these right now — no dev team, no custom platform, no code. Each method below includes a prompt you can paste into your preferred AI tool to generate a working interactive prototype: a self-contained practice activity with a briefing screen, a live AI interaction, and a debrief — all running in the browser, ready to share with stakeholders or deploy to learners.

OpenAI Adds Interactive Math and Science Learning Tools to ChatGPT — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Key Takeaways

  • ChatGPT adds interactive learning tools: OpenAI introduced interactive math and science visualizations that allow users to explore formulas, variables, and relationships in real time.
  • The tool currently covers over 70 core math and science topics and is aimed initially at high school and college-level learners.
  • Users can adjust variables, manipulate formulas, and immediately see how changes affect graphs and outcomes.
 

“But what’s happening right now is exponential.” — from linkedin.com by Josh Cavalier

Excerpt:

I need to be honest with you. I’ve been running experiments this week with Claude Code and Opus 4.6, and we have reached the precipice in the collapse of time required to produce high-quality text-based ID outputs.

This includes performance consulting reports, learning needs analyses, action mapping, scripts, storyboards, facilitator guides, rubrics, and technical specs.

I just mapped the entire performance consulting process into a multimodal AI integration architecture (diagram image). Every phase. Entry and contracting. Performance analysis. Cause analysis. Solution design. Implementation. Evaluation. Thirty files. System specifications for each. The next step is to vet out each “skill” with an expert performance consultant.

Then I attempted a learning output: an 8-module course built with a cognitive scaffold that moves beyond content delivery to facilitate deliberate practice, meaning-making, and guided reflection within the learner’s own context.

The result:



AI and human-centered learning — from linkedin.com by Patrick Blessinger

Democratizing opportunities

AI adaptive learning can adapt learning in real-time. These tools have the potential to provide a more personalized learning experience, but only if used properly.

The California State University system uses ChatGPT Edu (OpenAI, 2025). Students use it for AI-assisted tutoring, study aids, and writing support. These resources provide 24/7 availability of subject-matter expertise tailored to students’ learning needs. It is not a replacement for professors. Rather, it extends the reach of mentorship by reducing access barriers.

However, we must proceed with intellectual humility and ethical responsibility. Even though AI can customize messages, it cannot replace the encouragement of a teacher or professor, or the social and emotional aspects of learning. It’s at the intersection of humanistic values and knowledge development that education must find its balance.

 

At CES 2026, Everything Is AI. What Matters Is How You Use It — from wired.com by Boone Ashworth
Integrated chatbots and built-in machine intelligence are no longer standout features in consumer tech. If companies want to win in the AI era, they’ve got to hone the user experience.

Beyond Wearables
Right now, AI is on your face and arms—smart glasses and smart watches—but this year will see it proliferate further into products like earbuds, headphones, and smart clothing.

Health tech will see an influx of AI features too, as companies aim to use AI to monitor biometric data from wearables like rings and wristbands. Heath sensors will also continue to show up in newer places like toilets, bath mats, and brassieres.

The smart home will continue to be bolstered by machine intelligence, with more products that can listen, see, and understand what’s happening in your living space. Familiar candidates for AI-powered upgrades like smart vacuums and security cameras will be joined by surprising AI bedfellows like refrigerators and garage door openers.


Along these lines, see
live updates from CNET here.


ChatGPT is overrated. Here’s what to use instead. — from washingtonpost.com by Geoffrey A. Fowler
When I want help from AI, ChatGPT is no longer my default first stop.

I can tell you which AI tools are worth using — and which to avoid — because I’ve been running a chatbot fight club.

I conducted dozens of bot challenges based on real things people do with AI, including writing breakup texts and work emails, decoding legal contracts and scientific research, answering tricky research questions, and editing photos and making “art.” Human experts including best-selling authors, reference librarians, a renowned scientist and even a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer judged the results.

After a year of bot battles, one thing stands out: There is no single best AI. The smartest way to use chatbots today is to pick different tools for different jobs — and not assume one bot can do it all.


How Collaborative AI Agents Are Shaping the Future of Autonomous IT — from aijourn.com by Michael Nappi

Some enterprise platforms now support cross-agent communication and integration with ecosystems maintained by companies like Microsoft, NVIDIA, Google, and Oracle. These cross-platform data fabrics break down silos and turn isolated AI pilots into enterprise-wide services. The result is an IT backbone that not only automates but also collaborates for continuous learning, diagnostics, and system optimization in real time.


Nvidia dominated the headlines in 2025 — these were its 15 biggest events of the year — from finance.yahoo.com by Daniel Howley

It’s difficult to think of any single company that had a bigger impact on Wall Street and the AI trade in 2025 than Nvidia (NVDA).
…
Nvidia’s revenue soared in 2025, bringing in $187.1 billion, and its market capitalization continued to climb, briefly eclipsing the $5 trillion mark before settling back in the $4 trillion range.

There were plenty of major highs and deep lows throughout the year, but these 15 were among the biggest moments of Nvidia’s 2025.


 

 
 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian