I Predicted the Golden Era of AI Would End in 2026. Here Is How On Track That Prediction Actually Is.

Andrew Miles Davis holds himself accountable at the halfway point of the year, reviewing the four predictions he made for 2026 in January against what has actually happened. He finds strong evidence supporting his call that the golden era of free, ad-free, unregulated AI is drawing to a close, pointing to ChatGPT's underperforming ad experiment and the increasing likelihood of a significant pricing shift rather than a straightforward ad rollout. He confirms his prediction that large companies would dominate the space independent players like MidJourney, Runway, and N8N built, citing the shift toward Codex, Claude Code, and Seedance as clear evidence. His prediction that AI agents would not reach mainstream adoption this year also holds, largely due to unresolved safety and trust issues rather than technological limitations. The one prediction tracking softer than expected is the growing skill gap, which Andrew revises based on training close to two thousand people face to face so far this year and observing genuinely faster adoption than he anticipated. Subscribe to In AI Nutshell for daily ten-minute episodes that stay honest about what actually happens versus what was predicted.