There was a lot of AI hype (news) in 2025. A fundamental question remains: was this a good or bad year for AI technology? In this short article, I take on this question. I cover some AI claims of 2025, trying to figure out what this year entails for AI, business, life and the universe.
AI chatbots can summarise text or directly answer questions, but in theory, an agent can tackle much more complicated tasks that require multiple steps and decisions along the way. When Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) talked about these systems joining the workforce, he meant it. He envisioned a world in which you assign projects to an agent in the same way you might to a human employee. The often-predicted future in which AI dominates our lives requires something like agent technology to be realised.
The tech industry leaders and supporting media were optimistic that 2025 would prove pivotal in agent development and integration. In previous years, AI agents like Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex had become impressively adept at tackling multi-step computer programming problems. This same skill might easily generalise to other types of tasks. Mark Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, became so enthusiastic about these possibilities that early in 2025, he claimed that AI agents would imminently unleash a “digital labour revolution” worth trillions of dollars.
But here’s the thing: none of that ended up happening.
I’m neither pro nor anti-AI; I’m actually quite agnostic. I’m all for AI helping with checking data sums and formulas in my spreadsheets, and we’ve been using spell and grammar checkers forever. However, when it comes to selecting the best prices from an online dropdown or making subtle design choices that make a brand memorable and distinctly different, the flaws appear. And did you notice the warning whenever your favourite AI agent returns an answer?
Should we consider how to combat the surge of AI-generated slop? Possibly, as most social media, blog platforms and even our bookshelves are full of AI-generated content. How do we know this? Well, for now, it’s easy to spot; however, it is affecting our perceptions of the world. And as far as business goes, there are thousands of AI agents commercially available for customer interactions, productivity, operations, data analysis and content development (I’m using Grammarly for this article). How do business leaders choose and manage a profitable course through the ever-changing sea of app-based AI?
Why is that important? And how does that influence our daily business and social lives? A core component is about where our attention goes. Our attention is a highly valuable commodity, and people pay trillions of dollars to access it. Once they access it, we then click, buy stuff, gamble, scroll, and entertain ourselves. Are we being distracted from what matters most? Are we being distracted from hard choices, meaningful work, and better relationships? Time will tell, or are we already spending our precious time looking at the wrong things?
So, this is how I’m thinking about AI in 2026. Enough of the predictions already. I’m done reacting to hypotheticals propped up by vibes and some tech gurus’ go-to-market strategy. The impacts of existing technologies are more than enough to work through and cause more issues for people in the front-line trenches. Start spending a little more time away from the black glass and remember to pay attention to the warnings and think more about anything!
