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Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

#171

Post by alecco »

johnsmith1840 wrote: post #97
tomwojcik wrote: post #54

People's minds will become even lazier due to prolonged daily use of LLMs. They literally won't be able to think for themselves without AI assistance (that's why OpenAI won't fall, btw). Attention spans will drop even lower, causing severe psychological problems. Think 'Digital Dementia 2.0.' Later, LLMs will be portrayed as something evil, yet everyone will still use them. Parents will use them, while telling their…

I don't get this take. My knowledge and engineering has only gone up over time. I read significantly more and higher quality technical information and need to debug problems significantly harder. I think AI will in general make everyone a lot smarter. Maybe the people who use AI as a companion will melt? I'm sure there's some kind of repetitive addiction loop that could melt your brain just like anythibg else though.

Both are right.

The chasm between proactive vs lazy people is growing exponentially. I predict it will bring a lot of drama.

Re: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

#172

Post by jf22 »

braebo wrote: post #165
jf22 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what was the impact? Society has made tremendous progress since the invention of TV.

Trends around IQ and mental health suggest this age is quite the outlier historically.

Outlier compared to what?

I'm not denying new forms of media have negative impacts but the world kept spinning and progressing.

Re: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

#173

Post by nitwit005 »

jondwillis wrote: post #102
coffeecoders wrote: post #59

My prediction: 2026 looks normal. AI stays the top story but in a boring way as novelty wears off and models get cheaper and faster (maybe even more embedded). No AGI moment. LLMs start feeling like databases or cloud compute. No SpaceX or OpenAI IPO moment. Capital markets quietly reward the boring winners instead. S&P 500 grinds out another double digit year, mostly because earnings keep up and alternatives still l…

So, 2025 again, gotcha.

Predicting things won't change is typically the safe bet.

Re: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

#174

Post by sosodev »

johnwheeler wrote: post #45

- Tech layoffs grow 100% YoY - Multiple interest rate cuts instead of 1 - News about prosecutions for insider trading on Polymarket. - Bitcoin will touch a multi-year low. MSTR becomes insolvent. - Google Gemini will overtake ChatGPT in DAU. - Software will be more commoditized and the authors’ “taste” will become its primary differentiator. - Fiserv will increase 50% or more in market cap (I said the same thing last…

Prosecution for insider trading in 2026? I highly doubt that

Re: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

#175

Post by sosodev »

RickJWagner wrote: post #75

End of the Russian/Ukranian war. US improves relations with China. Climate problems are shown to be less serious than previously thought. The rich get richer, but nobody cares because quality of life is improved for everybody. AI brings additional leisure time, which results in a worldwide resurgence in bluegrass music as millions take up the guitar, mandolin and violin. The biggest surge is in banjo, though. Billy S…

It’s refreshing to a see single optimistic take in this thread

Re: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

#176

Post by nitwit005 »

US tourism continuing to slump, particularly if conflict with Venezuela happens.

More job interviews having a step to prove you can do it without AI, even at roles that expect you to use AI.

OpenAI will be on the front page of Reddit for how bad/annoying its ads are (There was already a popular post about it from someone in a test group).

Re: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

#178

Post by johnsmith1840 »

finnlab wrote: post #169
johnsmith1840 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this take. My knowledge and engineering has only gone up over time. I read significantly more and higher quality technical information and need to debug problems significantly harder. I think AI will in general make everyone a lot smarter. Maybe the people who use AI as a companion will melt? I'm sure there's some kind of repetitive addiction loop that could melt your brain just like anythibg else though.

I can only speak from personal experience. But as a 21 Year old, I'd definitely say that AI has made me so much more unproductive and reduced my attention span immensly. My Brain was already fried from social media and now there is always an "easy" way to do annoying but very educational tasks. And amongst my peers, especially those without a background in IT, misunderstanding and anthropomorphising has made this eve…

Eh, there's literally always something like this being told and doom and gloomed over. When I was 21 I heard almost the identical statement you said. Covid being the exception.

The only thing that matters is if YOU care. Do you like software? Do you want to learn and make something that was unatainable to you a year ago?

There's also a major difference between college and work so you shouldn't sweat it so much.

Re: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

#179

Post by johnsmith1840 »

deepsummer wrote: post #119
johnsmith1840 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this take. My knowledge and engineering has only gone up over time. I read significantly more and higher quality technical information and need to debug problems significantly harder. I think AI will in general make everyone a lot smarter. Maybe the people who use AI as a companion will melt? I'm sure there's some kind of repetitive addiction loop that could melt your brain just like anythibg else though.

I understand it. For example, with AI you don't need to remember stuff. Like there is a command in MacOS (two actually) to flush the DNS cache. I used to memorize it because I needed it like twice a week. These days, I can't remember it. I just tell Copilot to flush the cache for me. It knows what to do. And it's like that for many things. Complicated Git commands that I rarely need. I used to remember them at least…

lol I also had all sorts of commands memorized for k8s and pandas I don't remember at all. But let's all be honest, was it valuable to constantly lookup how to make a command do what you want?

I wasted so much time on dumbass pandas documentation search when I should have been building. AI is literally the internet all you are doing is querying the internet 2.0.

I often kept vast ugly text documents filled with random commands because I always forgot them.

Re: Ask HN: What are your predictions for 2026?

#180

Post by everfrustrated »

MichaelNolan wrote: post #87

Most to least confident: 1. Bazel is still not widely used outside of massive monorepos. (because its such a pain to use) 2. Solar power will surpass wind power in the US to become the 4th largest source of electricity. https://eia.languagelatte.com/ 3. Starship begins launching real payloads, achieves reusability of the upper stage, and successfully does a ship to ship fuel transfer. 4. Tesla stock has a major corre…

I was with you until the last.

Chinese will always be irrelevant to the US car market as both political parties will block chinese vehicle sales on (valid) national security grounds.

Uber and Lyft stocks crash as markets realise the game is up - nobody can compete with Tesla who can afford to burn excess spare factory capacity driving cars directly off the line to start picking up passengers. Waymo might have good AI but can't possibly compete with Teslas unit economics.

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