Here are some of the the major AI trends shaping 2026 — based on current expert forecasts, industry reports, and recent developments in technology. The material is analyzed using AI tools and final version hand-edited to this blog text:
1. Generative AI Continues to Mature
Generative AI (text, image, video, code) will become more advanced and mainstream, with notable growth in:
* Generative video creation
* Gaming and entertainment content generation
* Advanced synthetic data for simulations and analytics
This trend will bring new creative possibilities — and intensify debates around authenticity and copyright.
2. AI Agents Move From Tools to Autonomous Workers
Rather than just answering questions or generating content, AI systems will increasingly act autonomously, performing complex, multi-step workflows and interacting with apps and processes on behalf of users — a shift sometimes called agentic AI. These agents will become part of enterprise operations, not just assistant features.
3. Smaller, Efficient & Domain-Specific Models
Instead of “bigger is always better,” specialized AI models tailored to specific industries (healthcare, finance, legal, telecom, manufacturing) will start to dominate in many enterprise applications. These models are more accurate, legally compliant, and cost-efficient than general models.
4. AI Embedded Everywhere
AI won’t be an add-on feature — it will be built into everyday software and devices:
* Office apps with intelligent drafting, summarization, and task insights
* Operating systems with native AI
* Edge devices processing AI tasks locally
This makes AI pervasive in both work and consumer contexts.
5. AI Infrastructure Evolves: Inference & Efficiency Focus
More investment is going into inference infrastructure — the real-time decision-making step where models run in production — thereby optimizing costs, latency, and scalability. Enterprises are also consolidating AI stacks for better governance and compliance.
6. AI in Healthcare, Research, and Sustainability
AI is spreading beyond diagnostics into treatment planning, global health access, environmental modeling, and scientific discovery. These applications could help address personnel shortages and speed up research breakthroughs.
7. Security, Ethics & Governance Become Critical
With AI handling more sensitive tasks, organizations will prioritize:
* Ethical use frameworks
* Governance policies
* AI risk management
This trend reflects broader concerns about trust, compliance, and responsible deployment.
8. Multimodal AI Goes Mainstream
AI systems that understand and generate across text, images, audio, and video will grow rapidly, enabling richer interactions and more powerful applications in search, creative work, and interfaces.
9. On-Device and Edge AI Growth
10. New Roles: AI Manager & Human-Agent Collaboration
Instead of replacing humans, AI will shift job roles:
* People will manage, supervise, and orchestrate AI agents
* Human expertise will focus on strategy, oversight, and creative judgment
This human-in-the-loop model becomes the norm.
Sources:
[1]: https://www.brilworks.com/blog/ai-trends-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “7 AI Trends to Look for in 2026″
[2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2025/10/13/10-generative-ai-trends-in-2026-that-will-transform-work-and-life/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “10 Generative AI Trends In 2026 That Will Transform Work And Life”
[3]: https://millipixels.com/blog/ai-trends-2026?utm_source=chatgpt.com “AI Trends 2026: The Key Enterprise Shifts You Must Know | Millipixels”
[4]: https://www.digitalregenesys.com/blog/top-10-ai-trends-for-2026?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Digital Regenesys | Top 10 AI Trends for 2026″
[5]: https://www.n-ix.com/ai-trends/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “7 AI trends to watch in 2026 – N-iX”
[6]: https://news.microsoft.com/source/asia/2025/12/11/microsoft-unveils-7-ai-trends-for-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “Microsoft unveils 7 AI trends for 2026 – Source Asia”
[7]: https://www.risingtrends.co/blog/generative-ai-trends-2026?utm_source=chatgpt.com “7 Generative AI Trends to Watch In 2026″
[8]: https://www.fool.com/investing/2025/12/24/artificial-intelligence-ai-trends-to-watch-in-2026/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “3 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Trends to Watch in 2026 and How to Invest in Them | The Motley Fool”
[9]: https://www.reddit.com//r/AI_Agents/comments/1q3ka8o/i_read_google_clouds_ai_agent_trends_2026_report/?utm_source=chatgpt.com “I read Google Cloud’s “AI Agent Trends 2026” report, here are 10 takeaways that actually matter”
414 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://github.blog/changelog/2026-01-28-github-mcp-server-new-projects-tools-oauth-scope-filtering-and-new-features/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.howtogeek.com/you-can-make-a-self-hosted-ai-server-with-lm-studio-040/
Tomi Engdahl says:
AT&T is all-in on agentic AI
Case Study
Jan 28, 2026
5 mins
The telecom giant sees AI agents as the key to unlock value for its business and customers.
https://www.cio.com/article/4122884/att-is-all-in-on-agentic-ai.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://venturebeat.com/data/airtables-superagent-maintains-full-execution-visibility-to-solve-multi
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.xda-developers.com/pairing-notebooklm-with-gemini-gems/
Tomi Engdahl says:
US cyber defense chief accidentally uploaded secret government info to ChatGPT
Congress recently grilled the acting chief on mass layoffs and a failed polygraph.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/us-cyber-defense-chief-accidentally-uploaded-secret-government-info-to-chatgpt/
Tomi Engdahl says:
IBM says AI is insane in the mainframe as z17 sales surge
Big Blue leaning on software smarts to modernize COBOL estates and cut costs
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/ibm_q4_2025/
IBM’s leader has trumpeted an AI-on-the-mainframe future as generative AI fills in the COBOL gap left by earlier generations of techies.
Naturally, AI featured heavily as the firm briefed analysts on the numbers. “Our cumulative GenAI book of business now stands at over $12.5 billion, of which Software is more than $2 billion and Consulting is more than $10.5 billion, with both seeing the largest quarterly increase to date,” said Krishna.
He said the technology was also a “powerful productivity driver” for the firm itself. “In 2023, we set out on a goal to achieve $2 billion of productivity savings exiting 2024. And today, we are well ahead of that, exiting 2025 with $4.5 billion of annual run rate savings.”
However, the strongest growth came in IBM’s infrastructure business, which grew revenues 12 percent for the year, and 21 percent in the fourth quarter.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Kun tekoäly alkaa rakentaa itse itseään – Mitä tapahtuu ohjelmistokehittäjille?
Toni Stubin29.1.202606:00OhjelmistokehitysTekoälyJohtaminen
Tekoäly mullistaa ohjelmistojen kehittämisen, jos sitä osaa käyttää oikein. Nortalin teknologiajohtaja Jarkko Enden uskoo, että tulevaisuudessa it-ammattilaisilta vaaditaan enemmän arkkitehdin kuin ohjelmoijan ominaisuuksia.
https://www.tivi.fi/uutiset/a/76e8c70b-2be6-4fee-a597-5c444b62bac1
Tomi Engdahl says:
I tried every AI slide generator – NotebookLM is the one I’m actually keeping
https://www.xda-developers.com/tried-every-ai-slide-generator-notebooklm-is-the-one-actually-keeping/
The promise of the AI slide generator is always the same: ‘Give us a prompt, and we will give you a masterpiece.’ But after testing dozens of tools, I found that most of them prioritize style over substance and leave me with flashy templates filled with generic stuff.
I wanted a tool that actually understood my research, not just one that could pick a color palette. That’s when I realized the best AI slide generator isn’t actually a slide generator at all – it’s NotebookLM.
When I first started playing with AI slide generators, I was constantly running into the same issue: generic results. I would give a tool a prompt like ‘Modern cloud architecture for freelancers,’ and it would return a beautiful deck filled with generic, surface-level stuff that I had to spend an hour rewriting anyway.
That changed when I shifted to NotebookLM. Since my NotebookLM notebook already has relevant sources (be it a YouTube video, Markdown files, weblinks, or PDFs), it offers a fundamental shift in how the AI behaves.
Instead of the AI reaching out into the vast, often incorrect void of the internet to find information, it’s strictly limited to the documents I provide.
When I upload my own project notes, research papers, or meeting transcripts, the AI isn’t guessing what I want to say – it’s synthesizing what I have already said. The results were wild (more on that in a minute).
Because it’s connected to my data, the confusion essentially vanishes. I can trust the output because I can see exactly which part of my notes it came from.
It turns AI into a hyper-intelligent assistant that actually understands the nuance of my work.
Since it’s all grounded in my added sources, I know the info is accurate, and I don’t have to worry about the AI scanning my data.
Unfortunately, there is no way to import these slides into Google Slides for further editing. You can only export the deck in the PDF format, which is a bummer.
You are out of luck if you want to make small tweaks before sharing it with someone.
The real reason NotebookLM won me over isn’t just about the slides – it’s the fact that it’s an entire productivity ecosystem in a single tab. Most AI slide makers are one-trick tools. With NotebookLM, the presentation is just the starting point.
Tomi Engdahl says:
NotebookLM is powerful, but these two underrated Google Tools are better
https://www.xda-developers.com/google-illuminate-and-learn-about-better-than-notebooklm/
NotebookLM’s rise was the moment I realized how deep Google’s AI rabbit hole actually goes. The majority of people still think Google’s AI innovations end at Gemini, but in reality, Google has been quietly experimenting with powerful tools that deserve just as much attention.
While NotebookLM’s excellent RAG capabilities are what makes it so unique, it truly took off when Google added the Audio Overviews feature to it. If you aren’t familiar with it, the Audio Overviews feature lets you convert all the sources you upload to your notebook (PDFs, Google Docs, Word documents, images, audio files, webpages, YouTube URLs, etc.) into conversational podcasts.
Rather than an AI robotic voice reading your text, these podcasts are in-depth and conversational, making them an excellent way to consume long or complex material without staring at a screen. Illuminate is currently a Labs experiment that focuses on NotebookLM’s Audio Overviews feature.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://thenewstack.io/anthropic-extends-mcp-with-an-app-framework/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Create studio-quality training videos in minutes
Turn your text into videos with AI Avatars and voiceovers — no video editing skills required.
https://www.synthesia.io/learning-and-development
Tomi Engdahl says:
Agents gone wild! Companies give untrustworthy bots keys to the kingdom
‘We’re letting thousands of interns run around in our production environment’
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/ai_agent_identity_security/
Tomi Engdahl says:
An Agent Revolt: Moltbook Is Not A Good Idea
https://www.forbes.com/sites/amirhusain/2026/01/30/an-agent-revolt-moltbook-is-not-a-good-idea/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://lasoft.org/blog/how-to-survive-the-ai-apocalypse/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Experts Growing Worried About World in Which AI Takes Your Job and You Have No Way to Provide for Yourself
“I find the resulting outlook for employment terrifying.”
https://futurism.com/future-society/ai-labor-universal-income
Tomi Engdahl says:
Tekoälyn älytön hinta
https://www.iltalehti.fi/ilmiot/a/1545ee8d-71e7-4051-bc6f-9eb72b61db71
Eikö voitaisi välillä pysähtyä miettimään, mitä seurauksia tekoälybuumista oikein on, kirjoittaa Mikrobitin toimittaja Jani Ahosola.
Tomi Engdahl says:
An AI-only social network now has more than 1.6M ‘users.’ Here’s what you need to know
Moltbook was created by AI, for AI.
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ai-social-network-now-16m-users-heres/story?id=129848780#amp_tf=L%C3%A4hde%3A%20%251%24s&aoh=17705328678486&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&share=https%3A%2F%2Fabcnews.go.com%2FTechnology%2Fai-social-network-now-16m-users-heres%2Fstory%3Fid%3D129848780
Moltbook, a new website where AI programs can socialize with one another, has been gaining in popularity in recent days. Real people aren’t allowed to post on the platform, but humans can scroll through Moltbook as observers.
More than 1.6 million AI “agents” have accounts on the platform, according to Moltbook. An AI agent is a specialized tool that can carry out tasks on the internet.
“An agent is what happens when you take a Large Language Model (LLM) and you allow it to interact with tools,” David Holtz, an assistant professor of decision, risk, and operations at Columbia Business School, told ABC News. “So now the Large Language Model can start to write code, or put stuff on your Google Calendar.”
To sign up for Moltbook, a human operator must instruct an agent to do so. While more than 1.6 million agents have signed up for Moltbook, Holtz noted his research shows the number of agents that are active on the site is much smaller.
“Maybe it’s not in the millions, but there are in the tens of thousands that have posted on Moltbook and that’s quite a lot of traffic for something that is new and exciting like this,”
Moltbook itself was created by an agent. In late January, Matt Schlicht, a tech commentator and CEO of e-commerce company Octane, instructed his agent to code a website where AI programs can talk with one another. Moltbook, a play on “Facebook,” is what it came up with.
Despite the name, Moltbook is organized similarly to Reddit, these agents can post to various message boards centered around different topics. Some are conventional, such as the boards dedicated to debugging code or trading cryptocurrency.
Others are more unusual, such as a board titled “Bless Their Hearts,” in which the agents post stories about the humans that made them.
Tomi Engdahl says:
According to Holtz’s research, 93.5% of comments on Moltbook have received zero replies — something which normally indicates intelligence.
Tomi Engdahl says:
There are more than 300 people in the Code Louisville class that started last month, but this class will be the last, as the jobs they’re training for are now being taken by AI.
https://www.wdrb.com/_services/v1/client_captcha/challenge?request=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJleHAiOjE3NzA1MzUxODcsImlhdCI6MTc3MDUzNDg4NywicmVkaXJlY3QiOiIvbmV3cy9idXNpbmVzcy9jb2RlLWxvdWlzdmlsbGUtdG8tc2h1dC1kb3duLWFmdGVyLTEzLXllYXJzLWFzLXRlY2gtam9iLW1hcmtldC1zaGlmdHMvYXJ0aWNsZV80MmY0YzgwNC0yNDcwLTQ3MzgtOTNmZi02YzM5NmM2YTAzNDIuaHRtbCIsInNlcnZpY2UiOiJfbGJfcmF0ZV9jbXNhcHBfZm9yZWlnbiIsInNpdGUiOiJ3ZHJiLmNvbSJ9.9QBguyECLNmUsXWO6ow_2ykY4CDgnTApJ-8_X-sPGs8&fbclid=IwVERDUAP1F9hleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR43v4afLHuRXJxIxK91djhCkaDdtTDQo7g3Eqwm7RoOCmW7i9zXgsudJW0nxw_aem_UqGrFtKgk20lZE-qOeDbwQ
Tomi Engdahl says:
AI will not save developer productivity
opinion
Feb 2, 2026
7 mins
Improving developer productivity isn’t about producing more code faster, but producing well-architected, secure, and maintainable code. It’s about platforms, golden paths, and guardrails.
https://www.infoworld.com/article/4125409/ai-will-not-save-developer-productivity.html
Tomi Engdahl says:
Why Darren Aronofsky thought an AI-generated historical docudrama was a good idea
Production source says it takes “weeks” to produce just minutes of usable video.
https://arstechnica.com/features/2026/02/why-darren-aronofsky-thought-an-ai-generated-historical-docudrama-was-a-good-idea/
Last week, filmmaker Darren Aronofsky’s AI studio Primordial Soup and Time magazine released the first two episodes of On This Day… 1776. The year-long series of short-form videos features short vignettes describing what happened on that day of the American Revolution 250 years ago, but it does so using “a variety of AI tools” to produce photorealistic scenes containing avatars of historical figures like George Washington, Thomas Paine, and Benjamin Franklin.
In announcing the series, Time Studios President Ben Bitonti said the project provides “a glimpse at what thoughtful, creative, artist-led use of AI can look like—not replacing craft but expanding what’s possible and allowing storytellers to go places they simply couldn’t before.”
Outside critics were decidedly less excited about the effort. The AV Club took the introductory episodes to task for “repetitive camera movements [and] waxen characters” that make for “an ugly look at American history.” CNET said that this “AI slop is ruining American history,” calling the videos a “hellish broth of machine-driven AI slop and bad human choices.” The Guardian lamented that the “once-lauded director of Black Swan and The Wrestler has drowned himself in AI slop,” calling the series “embarrassing,” “terrible,” and “ugly as sin.” I could go on.
Tomi Engdahl says:
ChatGPT’s New Internet Browser Can Run 80% of a 1-Person Business — No Tech Skills Required
This is the shift from AI as a tool to AI as an operator — and it changes everything.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/chatgpts-new-internet-browser-can-run-80-of-a-1-person/502518
What if your internet browser acted like a full-time employee — handling research, planning and execution for you?
That’s exactly what OpenAI’s Atlas browser makes possible — and most people still aren’t using it.
https://www.thewolfofai.co/free-chapter
Tomi Engdahl says:
Microsoft Stock Takes Most Massive Single-Day Loss Since Pandemic as Its AI Efforts Flail
A historic day at the stock market for all the wrong reasons.
https://futurism.com/future-society/microsoft-stock-ai
Microsoft is taking a pounding in the stock market.
On Thursday, the Redmont giant’s share price collapsed by nearly 12 percent after it released its latest quarterly results, making it not only its biggest single day slide since March 2020, according to Bloomberg, but also one of the worst drops in the company’s history.
The Wile E. Coyote-worthy cliff-plunge, which wiped out over $400 billion in valuation, was despite Microsoft actually exceeding some key expectations, including its net income, which rose by 23 percent from the same period the year before to nearly $31 billion. Revenue also increased by 17 percent to $81.3 billion, which is about a billion more than what analysts projected.
But Microsoft’s AI spending spree has investors second-guessing its direction, and it’s striking that the lack of faith was strong enough to precipitate a historic plunge even with respectable financial growth.
Tomi Engdahl says:
I Ditched Claude Code and Now Using Open Source Qwen AI for Real Sysadmin Work
An AI assistant in the terminal can help you guide through the process, help you move faster with your tasks. I tested Qwen Code and share my findings with you.
https://itsfoss.com/qwen-code-sysadmin-tasks/
Over the past year, I have been experimenting more with AI-powered CLI tools, particularly for day-to-day sysadmin work. The idea is appealing. You describe what you want in plain English and let the tool handle the boring, error-prone parts, including fetching binaries, wiring paths, generating config files, and running sanity checks.
Claude Code does this reasonably well, but in my experience, it quickly becomes limiting. You see, access is gated, and it doesn’t feel like something I can casually drop into a Linux VM or a homelab without getting a paid subscription. Privacy is definitely a concern here.
What I really wanted was a tool I could treat like any other Linux utility. Install it once, use it when it makes sense, and ignore it when it doesn’t.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://medium.com/@joe.njenga/i-tested-claude-code-insights-it-roasted-my-coding-habits-e38c642e1642
Tomi Engdahl says:
Google Releases Conductor: a context driven Gemini CLI extension that stores knowledge as Markdown and orchestrates agentic workflows
https://www.marktechpost.com/2026/02/02/google-releases-conductor-a-context-driven-gemini-cli-extension-that-stores-knowledge-as-markdown-and-orchestrates-agentic-workflows/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.xda-developers.com/copilot-notebooks-in-onenote-is-more-powerful-than-initially-estimated/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://futurecoding.ai/?fbclid=Iwb21leAPvzIdjbGNrA-_MgGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHk061NVyIgmSc5usNXQx4Q9pAnHH1O-s5AWXEQspiwJOY0s0EalFZCrV-NKv_aem_GeOxTbmfD7y8tLqQoTYD3A&utm_source=fb&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=120239862622330764&utm_term=120239862622340764&utm_content=120240406898300764&utm_id=120239862622330764_v2_s06_e7447
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://muropaketti.com/tietotekniikka/tietotekniikkauutiset/intel-valitsi-puolensa-tekoaly-ja-xeonit-kiilaavat-kuluttajasuorittimien-ohi/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.almainsights.fi/juridiikan-palvelut/edilex-ai/?utm_source=meta&utm_medium=paid-social&utm_campaign=edilex_ai_h1_2026&utm_content=1&utm_id=Edile01159&fbclid=IwdGRjcAP1SPtleHRuA2FlbQEwAGFkaWQBqy9Xm6Srp3NydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHrdiHAzfK_mEnwIwKdZjUDAG15T6r6So6IJQhJiWGP1pDB6lvo2baxK02PsK_aem_JSL3CPz0gpqp1koYE4nUbw&utm_term=120235491768390663
Juridista tietoa tekoälyn tehokkuudella – Edilex AI
Edilex AI vie juridisen tiedonhaun uudelle tasolle. Palvelu hyödyntää generatiivista tekoälyä tarjotakseen vastaukset juridisiin kysymyksiin nopeasti, täsmällisesti ja luotettaviin lähteisiin perustuen. Voit keskittyä analyysiin ja päätöksentekoon, kun tekoäly käsittelee ja tiivistää tietoa.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The curious evolution of the ‘chief AI officer’
Opinion
Feb 4, 2026
8 mins
https://www.cio.com/article/4126708/the-curious-evolution-of-the-chief-ai-officer.html
The CAIO started as a signal of intent, but as AI hits production, the job is changing from “go explore” to “make it work, safely, at scale.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://gpai.app/
What do you want to visualize?
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.oreilly.com/radar/reverse-engineering-your-software-architecture-with-claude-code-to-help-claude-code/
Tomi Engdahl says:
My local LLM replaced ChatGPT for most of my daily work
https://www.xda-developers.com/local-llm-replaced-chatgpt-for-daily-work/
ChatGPT is still the default AI tool for most people, and for good reason – it’s fast and convenient, and also good enough at a broad range of tasks that you don’t really have to think twice about using it. That’s exactly why I didn’t expect a local LLM to make a difference once I started using one; it gives you the same functionality.
Since I’ve been leaning more toward a self-hosted setup lately, I realized most of my daily AI usage didn’t actually need the cloud either. Brainstorming ideas and fleshing out my notes works just as well, if not better, when the model lives on my computer. Once improved latency and privacy entered the picture, going back to a fully cloud-based setup felt unnecessary.
ChatGPT is incredibly useful, and to those who are comfortable with cloud-based services, there isn’t really a need to switch to a local LLM. It has real-time web access, lets you upload files for reference and synthesis, and can learn from and adapt to your behavior. That’s exactly why tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are so easy to rely on for everyday work.
However, ChatGPT isn’t frictionless or infallible. For starters, you’re entirely reliant on an internet connection, which means your workflow breaks the minute your connection does. Every interaction with the AI goes through remote servers and is processed in the cloud, not on your device. Which brings me to the second downside – your chats aren’t under your control.
Your prompts and conversation history live on someone else’s servers, which are governed by changing policies, retention rules, and unclear training practices. While you can export conversations, it’s not the same as owning them and being able to use them freely across tools. For everyday work, this feels rather temporary and disposable.
The biggest upside to switching to a local LLM is privacy, ownership, and offline usability. Everything happens locally on your machine, and you own all of the prompts and responses. My LLM runner of choice is LM Studio, and it automatically creates local folders where it stores all of my conversations in JSON files. I can parse and convert then use the files across other tools. And if you’re using an offline-first stack like me, then you don’t need a connection at any point in the process. A local LLM will also be faster because there’s no network latency or server queue slowing things down.
Another really cool upside to using a local LLM is that you can select your own model, and there are loads to choose from – whereas ChatGPT significantly limits model options, even for paying subscribers.
In my use case, I needed something that excels at assisting with my UX design coursework and also broad-spectrum querying, so I’m using OpenAI’s gpt-oss 20b, but Qwen3 4b would also be a good fit. If you’re using LM Studio, I recommend checking out its model catalog.
Local LLMs also behave a bit differently. Because they’re local and don’t collect your data, the models don’t learn from your behavior over time. Local models are static and there are no mechanisms for them to adapt to your prompt styles. This could be beneficial or a downside, depending on what you expect from an AI model. The benefit of interacting with a static model is that it reduces the risk of unpredictable behavior and, most importantly, confirmation bias. The downside is that chats will be less conversational or personable.
Lastly, most LLM runners have configurable settings for every model you load. These include things like temperature (which controls randomness/creativity), output length, sampling methods, system prompt, and so on.
How I set up my local LLM
Anyone can do it
It used to be the case that you needed some coding experience to set up a local LLM, but LLM runners with graphical interfaces have made it accessible to anyone regardless of coding experience.
I recommend checking that you have the necessary hardware before getting started. You need a GPU that has at least 4GB+ of VRAM (8GB recommended), at least 16GB RAM, and at least 20GB+ of free storage (SSD recommended). I also turned on the Limit Model Offload toggle so that the model weights only load into VRAM for faster performance.
Switching to a local LLM wasn’t necessarily about abandoning ChatGPT, it just gave me some unexpected benefits by optimizing my workflow for speed and privacy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Self-Driving Cars In ‘Difficult Driving Situations’ Are Guided By Random Filipinos Overseas, Company Confirms
https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2026/02/05/self-driving-cars-in-difficult-driving-situations-guided-by-random-filipinos-overseas/
The chief safety officer for a leading self-driving car company admitted during a Senate hearing Wednesday that it hires remote human operators overseas to guide cars in “difficult driving situations.”
The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing Wednesday on the future of self-driving cars during which Waymo and Tesla executives testified. Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey pressed Waymo Chief Safety Officer Mauricio Peña on if his company’s remote human operators worked from outside the U.S. and Peña responded that some were based in the Philippines.
In his exchange with Markey, Peña acknowledged that his company’s operators do not remotely drive the vehicle but rather serve to provide additional input and guide Waymo vehicles in what the senator called “difficult driving situations.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
Näin teet Suno-tason musiikkia omalla koneella (Ilmainen)
https://youtu.be/Xyd7Sf6JY5s?si=jYLYJyk8dNszeGgM
Tomi Engdahl says:
How should AI agents consume external data?
feature
Feb 2, 2026
12 mins
https://www.infoworld.com/article/4120322/how-should-ai-agents-consume-external-data.html
The jury’s out on screen scraping versus official APIs. And the truth is, any AI agent worth its salt will likely need a mixture of both.
Tomi Engdahl says:
5 Open Source Image Editing AI Models
From real-time edits to reasoning-driven image transformations, this guide breaks down five open source AI models that are quietly reshaping how images are created and edited.
https://www.kdnuggets.com/5-open-source-image-editing-ai-models
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.xda-developers.com/claude-code-inside-obsidian-and-it-was-eye-opening/
Tomi Engdahl says:
How to transform work with Claude in Excel and PowerPoint
With significant new improvements such as Claude Opus 4.6, Cowork, Claude in Excel and Claude in PowerPoint, Claude is now purpose-built for the workflows that matter most for finance analysts, consultants, and many more. Now anyone can move from raw data to building polished, publication-ready outputs with a strong thinking partner in Claude.
https://www.anthropic.com/webinars/claude-in-excel-and-powerpoint
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://planpick.in/top-20-gemini-ai-photo-prompts-for-indian-boys-to-create-stylish-4k-hd-portraits/
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.anthropic.com/webinars/claude-in-excel-and-powerpoint
Tomi Engdahl says:
AI fakes on Minneapolis and Venezuela are spreading like wildfire – how can we tell what is real?
Artificial intelligence can generate huge reams of content almost instantly, filling our timelines with videos from the bizarre to the gruesome. But experts tell Bryony Gooch that AI is poisoning an internet already rife with disinformation
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ai-fakes-ice-minneapolis-venezuela-b2910045.html?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP2dVJjbGNrA_Z1CGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHnIT2xO9VDzmefxbXeB_BcJ2uNGU4_-7T4hhc-SOBH24SBvQeE-OKgbauop3_aem_cPYPaFgAb2jvYsq4-SExtQ&test_group=lighteradlayout
It rarely takes more than a few scrolls to see an AI-generated video in 2026.
From the capture of Nicolas Maduro by US forces in Venezuela to the fatal shooting of members of the public in Minneapolis by ICE agents, millions of people are consuming AI-generated videos and images on some of the world’s most significant news events – making it impossible to discern what is real or fake.
Experts have warned The Independent that AI-generated content is spreading at such a rapid pace that it is filling the information void before facts emerge, leading to the emergence of false narratives as news organisations scramble to verify
“Visual cues that once helped us spot fake content are no longer reliable, increasing the risk of misinformation spreading at scale — especially when AI fakes are amplified by well-known or verified accounts.”
In such an unregulated information space, bad-faith political actors can now claim that real videos are fake.
“What we now see is a real video will start circulating and they will claim it’s an AI deepfake, which gives them plausible deniability,” warns Professor Alan Jagolinzer, co-chair of the Cambridge Disinformation Summit.
“That’s actually part of the danger here, and arguably it’s more insidious than people buying into a fake video.”
Even the White House recently provoked outrage after sharing a digitally altered photo of an activist who was arrested for organising an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church. The picture had been edited to make it look like she was crying.
“This is not the first time that the White House has shared AI-manipulated or AI-generated content. This trend is troubling on several levels. Not only are they sharing deceptive content, they are making it increasingly more difficult for the public to trust anything they share with us,” Farid told CBS News.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Outside the US, content generated by AI has also played a role in promoting false narratives about major global incidents including the arrest of Maduro, protests in Iran and the recent antisemitic terror attack on Bondi Beach.
According to Mr Carrasco, the biggest step people can take to discern the from the fake is a simple one. Ask yourself: do I trust this source?
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ai-fakes-ice-minneapolis-venezuela-b2910045.html?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP2eY5jbGNrA_Z1CGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHnIT2xO9VDzmefxbXeB_BcJ2uNGU4_-7T4hhc-SOBH24SBvQeE-OKgbauop3_aem_cPYPaFgAb2jvYsq4-SExtQ&test_group=lighteradlayout
Tomi Engdahl says:
SpaceX is acquiring xAI ahead of a possible IPO. Read Elon Musk’s memo
https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-acquiring-xai-deal-elon-musk-2026-2?fbclid=IwdGRjcAP2glhleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAwzNTA2ODU1MzE3MjgAAR4ncyLJpy9F20r5169Q7y-wWpktSwUaaSIhwgSp07TXYqlIxd4Xbse7IZIn8w_aem_dZwansrJh33Oaxr0Rr_hfw
It’s official: Elon Musk is combining SpaceX and xAI as he overhauls his sprawling business empire.
The CEO wrote that the deal would create “the most ambitious, vertically-integrated innovation engine on (and off) Earth, with AI, rockets, space-based internet, direct-to-mobile device communications and the world’s foremost real-time information and free speech platform.”
Tomi Engdahl says:
ChatGPT, “Create a caricature of me and my job based on everything you know about me”
And give some pictures
Tomi Engdahl says:
Becoming Redundant
Wave of Suicides Hits as India’s Economy Is Ravaged by AI
“Very alarming.”
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/suicides-india-economy-ai
For decades, tech companies have relied immensely on India’s vast workforce, from entry-level call center jobs to software engineers and high-ranking managerial positions.
But with the advent of advanced AI, which has been accompanied by employers greatly cutting back on hiring with the hopes of eventually automating tasks entirely, India’s tech workers are having to cope with a vastly different reality in 2026.
Tomi Engdahl says:
4 Reasons Not To Use Generative AI For Writing
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gracefoster/2026/02/05/4-reasons-not-to-use-generative-ai-for-writing/
Don’t get me wrong: using generative AI for writing can be an excellent strategy to save you time or brainpower. Writing demands a lot of both. So, it makes sense that writing tasks make up 24% of all ChatGPT usage, according to OpenAI’s ChatGPT user report, making it by far the most common topic in user interactions.
Not all writing tasks are created equally, however, and while AI can be helpful with some, it can be counterproductive with others. Here are four questions to help you decide whether or not using AI will be helpful for a given writing task or if there’s a good reason to do it yourself.
Will using generative AI for writing actually save you time or effort?
Using ChatGPT or other chat-based AI tools to complete writing tasks doesn’t actually eliminate the need for you to do any writing yourself. Rather, your writing task shifts from the genre of the output (email, proposal, cover letter) to the prompt—and writing an effective prompt takes work. Good prompts tend to be paragraphs, not sentences. Crafting one that will yield useful output from AI—output that minimizes the editing required, and meets the goals of both you and your readers—requires time, effort, and repeated practice.
Ask yourself if using AI for the writing task in front of you will save you time, or if it will just transfer the time you’d spend on one writing task to a different one.
Will using generative AI for writing cause more work for your colleagues downstream?
If you’re not careful, outsourcing your writing to AI may also shift the writing work down the line to a colleague or client. Used carelessly, AI might produce workslop, or content that masquerades as good but actually has no substance. It is your responsibility to do a quality control check on the AI output before you send it on to someone else. In other words, you must edit the content to meet the standards of quality in your organization.
If you don’t have time to properly review the content before sending it on, the next person who reads it will likely have to spend time and effort trying to parse out the meaning of the text and then fixing it.
In a BetterUps study on AI workslop, the researchers reported a sobering result: “When we asked participants in our study how it feels to receive workslop, 53% report being annoyed, 38% confused, and 22% offended.” The cost of workslop is greater than just the time your colleague has to spend understanding and salvaging your bad content: passing the buck in this way causes resentment and hurts your relationships with your coworkers.
Do you need to be able to remember or have nuanced conversations about the content you’re producing?
In a fast-paced work environment, AI’s lightning-fast ability to draft, summarize, and pull out key takeaways is deeply appealing. If, for example, you are distilling the notes from a routine meeting for colleagues who weren’t able to attend, why not use a timesaving tool? Your responsibility in that instance is just to document information for others’ reference, and AI tools can make this task substantially faster and easier.
If, on the other hand, you attend a conference on a new advancement that will revolutionize your field, and you are tasked with educating your colleagues back in the home office, it might be worth your time to synthesize the information you received the old-fashioned way.
That’s because research shows a significant neuroscientific benefit to writing, and especially writing by hand, which lights up multiple regions of the brain involved in motor control, sensory perception, and cognitive processing. Studies show that writing in this way leads to deeper comprehension and better knowledge retention.
While writing on your own is slow, that very slowness is part of what makes the process cognitively beneficial. When you consider using AI tools to outsource a particular writing task, ask yourself if the shortcut is worth it (it might be!) or if you stand to gain something important by taking your time with it. (Keep in mind, too, that there are other ways to get faster at writing on your own.)
Are you thinking about using generative AI for writing about private or proprietary information?
Be careful about inputting texts into AI tools for editing that include confidential information or proprietary, original content. Generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Copilot are learning from the information you give them, though you can choose to change the privacy settings so that they do not retain your data.
Some companies have strict policies around AI usage, which clarify what you may and may not put into an AI tool. Others have built customized AI tools for internal usage, which safeguard the system: the tool is trained on internal (and relevant) datasets, and your inputs will stay inside the system.
When you’re working on your own, and there’s no “official company policy” to rely on, you have to make those assessments for yourself.
The bottom line is that generative AI tools can save you time and effort on many writing and editing tasks—but there are also communication tasks that are worth taking the time to do yourself, even if doing so is slower and more difficult.