LFP 127: Anticipating 2026

When we started this Podcast back in August 2022, we, Calum and David, announced the theme to be “Anticipating and managing exponential impact”. We talked about three sub-themes: Developing the skills of exponential foresight; Distinguishing between scenarios, whether they were plausible or implausible, and whether they were desirable or undesirable; and thirdly, Supporting the community of collaborative exponential foresight. 126 episodes later, as we reach the transition between 2025 and 2026, it’s a good time for the two of us to take stock. Accordingly, in this episode, we each pick out a number of events from the last 12 months which we see as potential signals of larger exponential impact ahead. Selected follow-ups: An MIT report that 95% of AI pilots fail spooked investors - by Jeremy Kahn The Shape of AI: Jaggedness, Bottlenecks and Salients - by Ethan Mollick The Road To Superintelligence - by Calum AI Doomers, Accelerationists & Scouts - Digital Disruption The Economic Singularity - book by Calum How can better foresight actually improve the world? - Webinar in the series "From forecasts to levers" Disrupting the first reported AI-orchestrated cyber espionage campaign - Anthropic Major Neuromorphic Computing projects - listed by Conscium Why AI Agent Verification Is A Critical Industry - by Calum Climate change and populism: Grounds for optimism? - LFP episode with Matt Burgess What's Our Problem? - book by Tim Urban OpenAI and Retro Biosciences achieve 50x increase in expressing stem cell reprogramming markers Progress at LEVF, December 2025 - by David UK Biobank The THRIVE Act - Regenerative Medicine Foundation Music: Spike Protein, by Koi Discovery, available under CC0 1.0 Public Domain Declaration