Artificial intelligence certainly didn’t debut in 2025, but it was the year it really started to hit the mainstream. ChatGPT, at the start of the year, had between 300 million and 400 million average weekly users. By October, that number had doubled. Meanwhile, usage of other AI systems, including Perplexity and Google’s Gemini, saw similar leaps in usage.
Now, with 2026 on the horizon, people are wondering what’s next. Fast Company spoke to several analysts and industry experts to get their projections on what we can expect as AI’s influence continues to spread in 2026.
The bubble won’t pop
While the bears on Wall Street continue to talk loudly about an AI bubble, Wedbush’s Dan Ives says those fears are overblown and the AI trade will actually get bigger in 2026. Ives says the consumer AI revolution has not truly begun, and the expected rise of robotics in the years to come, as well as the long runway for corporate use and global expansion, will drive an ongoing tech bull market.
“This AI revolution is just beginning today, and we believe tech stocks and the AI winners should be bought, given our view that this is Year 3 of what will be a 10-year cycle of this AI revolution build-out,” he writes. “We expect tech stocks to be up another 20% in 2026 as this next stage of the AI revolution hits its stride.”
A leap in “lazy thinking”
Not all of the predictions around AI in 2026 are quite so bullish. Gartner sends up a red flag about people’s growing dependence on chatbots and their automatic acceptance of whatever those devices spew out. Through 2026, the analytics firm predicts, there will be an “atrophy of critical-thinking skills due to Gen AI use.” That, it says, will push half of global organizations to require AI-free skills assessments.
“As automation accelerates, the ability to think independently and creatively will become both increasingly rareand increasingly valuable,” Gartner writes.
Gen AI will move from stand-alone sites to search engines
Generative AI chatbots are how many people interact with AI. They don’t require any tech knowledge (although the more you know about how to phrase prompts, the more efficient they are), and they’re free. For tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, you generally have to visit a stand-alone website to access them. In 2026 and beyond, however, Deloitte says that more people will begin to use generative AI that’s embedded within existing applications, like search engines. “In terms of daily use, accessing Gen AI within a search engine [when a search yields a synthesis of results] will be 300% more common than using any stand-alone Gen AI tool,” the consulting firm writes.
Rise of the robots
While humanoid robots in 2026 may not reach the levels Elon Musk predicts, we are likely to see a substantial increase in AI-driven robotics, Deloitte says. The number of industrial robots is expected to reach 5.5 million. That’s the beginning of a wavewhich could see annual shipments begin to increase until they reach 1 million per year by 2030. That increase, the firm says, will be driven by labor shortages and “exponential advancements in computing power.”
A legal tsunami
AI firms are already facing a number of lawsuits, most prominently involving cases in which plaintiffs argue that AI drove people to take their own lives. That has put a spotlight on the lack of guardrails around the industry. But to date, Washington has shown little interest in setting firm parameters for AI companies. (Some states are attempting to do so, however.)
Gartner predicts that by the end of 2026, there will be more than 2,000 “death by AI” legal claims. The upside of this tragedy, it continues, is that it could finally push regulators to focus on safety issues.
“Black box systemsAI models whose decision-making processes are opaque or difficult to interpretcan misfire, especially in high-stakes sectors like healthcare, finance, and public safety,” the analytics firm writes. “Explainability, ethical design, and clean data will become nonnegotiable.”
The design of the steel-ribbed umbrella has changed little since it was introduced in the 1850s, but the mechanical engineers and origami experts who made an umbrella that works by folding say they’ve finally improved upon it.
The $249 Ori umbrella has a frameless design with a laminate composite canopy, which fits into a 3.5-centimeter cylinder smart handle with an OLED display. That means there are no steel elements that can go haywire and leave you with a misshapen mess when you’re caught in a strong wind. It seems we finally have an umbrella that looks like it was invented in the 21st century.
The design team included origami experts who usually work in aerospace, research, and advanced deployable structures. And that’s where the key lay. The team used an origami technique called the the Miura-ori, invented by Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura in 1970, to replace the functionality of a steel frame. Miura-ori allows for a compact foldand it has since been used in satellites.
[Image: Ori]
“Everyone owns one, yet the umbrella is a forgotten object, stuck in the past. We wanted to turn it into a modern device: smart, intentional, premium, and engineered like a modern device,” Ori founder Modestas Balcytis tells Fast Company in an email.
The canopy feels solid when it’s open, as it’s not fabric stretched over a frame, but rather a single continuous origami surface.
[Image: Ori]
“When it opens, you can feel the geometry locking into place, turning a flat surface into a strong, self-supporting structure,” Balcytis says.
The umbrella is wind resistant, unlike traditional umbrellas that can fold and turn inside out. Oris canopy surface is also UV resistant and lasts longer than a ribbed umbrella, according to the company. The umbrella is available now to reserve and is expected to start shipping in spring or summer 2026.
[Image: Ori]
The Ori Umbrella is priced far above your standard pharmacy brand, and it’s being marketed that way: Promotional images look akin to those you might see for Dyson vacuums or Apple iPhones. The umbrella comes in blue, silver, and gold; charges with a USB-C cable; and opens and closes with a single click.
The company is pitching its product as an alternative to poorly designed ribbed umbrellas, which often break and don’t last as long. Ori says it has tested the umbrella through 400 to 500 folding cycles. This is umbrella as high tech, and the company says it has plans to design more products using the Miura-ori technique.
“Ori isn’t here to sell umbrellas, Balcytis says. We’re building a new language for folding objects.
I am not clairvoyant and have no crystal ball. But Ive got some predictions for 2026.
I learned about predictions from a master of the craft: Byron Wien, a market strategist who rose to Wall Street prominence in the 1990s for his annual Ten Surprises list. Back in the day, I spent several weeks shadowing Wien as a reporter, and the lessons have long stuck with me.
Wien said that the prediction game wasnt about being right. It was about identifying trends. He knew many of his surprises would never come to pass, at least not in the extreme form that he shared. But they sparked dialogue and got people to confront their assumptions. And every now and then, hed hit something spot-on.
In the spirit of Wien’s lists, Im sharing my own predicted surprises for the year ahead. Consider them provocations for discussion. And well see how it all plays out.
Im reminded of an insight Wien shared privately with me, as he ticked through the holdings in his personal investment portfolio. He said that he owned Investment A for Reason A, and Investment B for Reason B. And then he said that he owned Investment C as a hedge against everything else I believe. He knew that hed be wrong about some things, and was prepared to be wrong about everything. Ive yet to find a better approach for navigating a chaotic world.
Now, on to the predictions!
1. Tech stocks will stall
No oneand I mean no onehas a consistent record of correctly calling the stock market. But just this once, I have a feeling.
Yes, AI profits at Nvidia are astounding. Yes, the dominance of hyperscalers like Google and Amazon and Microsoft continues to grow. But the money being plowed into AI capabilities right now is not yet yielding significant incremental value for AI end users: the customers of hyperscalers.
So while a narrow group of very rich companies are pouring billions into AI development (and driving those huge numbers at Nvidia), it is not yet a tide that raises all boats. For tech stock valuations to climb from here, the value generated by artificial intelligence needs to broaden. If other tech cycles are a guide, theres usually a period of consolidation at some pointa plateau at best, a significant crash at worst. Id bet on the former, in part because AI investment is largely being pulled from cash rather than leveraged by borrowing.
Before you rush to sell all your tech stocks, a caveat: More than 15 years ago, early in my tenure as editor of Fast Company, we ran a cover with the headline Open Season on Apple. We outlined how competitors were coming at the company from all sides, and the risks that the still-in-charge Steve Jobs faced. Our analysis was keen. Our concern was flat-out wrong.
2. AI will be an excuse for layoffs more than a cause of them
The workforce will be dramatically reset by the expanded use of AI tools. But not in the next 12 months. For now, tech-driven workplace changes remain on the periphery. Despite the worry and uncertainty, AI so far has made workers more valuable rather than redundant. Still, that wont deter many businesses from citing AI as a rationale for 2026 restructurings that will have more to do with addressing overexpansion or evolving business practices than with AI bots taking over human jobs.
By pointing to AI as the culprit, business leaders will have public cover for their activities (it is a necessary adjustment to a new reality) and engage the ardor of investors (we are becoming an AI-first enterprise). Identifying which layoffs are truly tech-related and which are in response to failed business strategies will become a schadenfreude-based parlor game.
3. Cyber hacks will reach crisis level
When you talk to the CEOs of major cybersecurity firms, they extol AI as a security enhancer: a tool to identify never-before-seen attacks in never-before-possible ways. They acknowledge that bad actors are increasingly using AI in their exploits. But they contend that AI protection tools are more sophisticatedessentially, our AI is better than their AI.
I have no evidence to undercut that assertion. But it is also true that not every business or individual has the protection of a cutting-edge cybersecurity system. It is said that AI raises the floor on capabilities, and it certainly lowers costswhich means we are in for more attacks, better attacks, and more disruption. Only those outfits that can raise the ceiling on cyber defense will be better protected. And if those cyber pros saying our AI is better” are wrong? Then mind your bank accounts, crypto wallets, and power grids!
4. Electricity costs will drop
AI data centers have dominated headlines about energy prices and energy availability. But that masks a larger trend toward electrification globally, at a scale that far exceeds AIs demands. A decade’s worth of renewable energy investments around the world (particularly by China) is creating a baseline of energy self-sufficiency in parts of the developing world.
In developed countries, modernization of electrical grids will yield significant efficiency gains. And whatever your views on the environmental impact, the Trump administrations embrace of more fossil fuel drilling will increase supplies. So is all the media coverage of data-center power demands overblown? Hate to say it, but “yes.”
5. U.S. immigration numbers will rise
U.S. immigration policy has long been hostage to politics. The vast majority of Americans want to simultaneously protect the U.S. border from illegal crossings and facilitate entry for approved newcomers. But that commonsense approach has been stymied by partisan posturing. Yet just maybe, 2026 offers a window to square that circle. Donald Trump, by virtue of his hardline border position (and deportations), has the unprecedented opportunity to reset policy in a healthier direction. Heres why he might embrace that opportunity:
The economy benefits from the low-cost labor of newcomers.
Silicon Valley is desperate to remain a magnet for worldwide tech talent.
U.S. voters in both parties support a commonsense mix of strong borders and open-entry rules, especially among Latino voters who supported Trump but have become disillusioned.
A balanced remaking of immigration policy would defang a key Democratic critique and rallying cry.
6. MAHA will succumb to science
Government health websites have recently added language that connects vaccines to autisma core tenet of U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., despite bare scientific evidence. But there are othr signals that, as Kennedy learns more about how the health research communities actually work, he is becoming more open to reconsidering some of his assumptions. Vaccines and autism may remain a bright line for MAHA, but as 2026 unfolds, the value of the FDA and the CDC and other public health entities will take a growing role in U.S. health policy.
7. Nuclear power will solve climate change
We all want a silver bullet for intractable challenges, and they rarely exist. But there is a chance that breakthroughs in nuclear power can do just that when it comes to climate change. There have been important advances in using nuclear fusion to generate powerthe safer, less discussed, and more prospective cousin of nuclear fission, which is responsible for all current nuclear reactors (as well as nuclear weapons).
In 2026, the advances in nuclear fusion are poised to reach a tipping point, opening the way to broadscale commercial applications. While it will take years for a nuclear fusion industry to establish itself and measurably impact the direction of global climate change, we will look back at 2026 as the beginning. At least I hope so!
8. The U.S. will win the World Cup!
Lets be clear: I am not predicting that Team USA will win the World Cup. That would be awesomebut its unrealistic, given how the U.S. mens national soccer team has performed in international play. But as a host of the World Cup, the U.S. as a nation will make the most of a tremendous opportunity to reestablish the brand of the United States on the global stage. After the disruptions of tariff wars, the U.S. brand is in an uncomfortable position heading into 2026. What the World Cup offers is a window for the world on what makes the U.S. special, desirable, and worthy of global esteem.
Am I talking about propaganda? Maybe some might see it that way; I like to think of it as patriotism. The World Cup is a test case for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the ultimate spectacle to highlight Americas leadership model globally. Heres hoping the World Cup sets the right tone.
For venture capital, 2025 was all about artificial intelligencea trend that’s all but certain to carry into 2026.
More than half of all VC dollarsand 36% of total dealsnow flow to AI companies, according to a recent Silicon Valley Bank report. Crunchbase recently reported that 14% of all global venture investment in 2025 went to AI giants OpenAI and Anthropic. The year also saw huge deals like a $2 billion seed round raise by Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati.
AI deals are also often closing quickly, with investment rounds that once would have taken weeks to close being handled in a manner of days, says Tim Tully, a partner at Menlo Ventures. You’re seeing people raise these large rounds with no decks, which is kind of shocking, or not even absolute clarity around precisely what the company is going to do, he says. Youre seeing funding of teams over what the team is doing.
But even amid speculation that the industry could be in a bubbleand some signs of public fatigue with the technology thats snuck into everything from therapy sessions to childrens toysinvestors and industry observers say the AI push will continue in 2026.
TAM explosion
In some ways, AI mimics the investment wave around other recent transformative technologies, like the rise of the PC, internet, and mobile phone. New technologies come, and they’re transformative, and that drives a lot of investment, says Steven Neil Kaplan, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies venture capital. Some of them work out, some of them don’t, and hopefully the world becomes more productive.
But Michael Carmen, co-head of private investments at Wellington Management and the coauthor of a venture capital outlook report the firm released in December, says AI companies have recently been growing revenue at a historically fast ratequicker than previous generations of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. Widespread internet use has given new AI products essentially instant access to a huge potential market, Carmen adds, noting, When you think about the [total addressable market] of AI over the longer term, it could be the largest TAM of anything that we’ve ever seen in technology.
AI is increasingly competing with traditional SaaS businesses for both customers and investors, says Saagar Bhavsar, partner at Begin Capital. For one thing, artificial intelligence has businesses wondering if its more viable to build software tools in-house with the aid of new coding assistants and other AI agents.
If your cost of building the software and time of building the software is going close to zero, the whole idea of SaaS disappears, says Sergey Gribov, general partner at Flint Capital.
Even without AI, some companies have begun to reconsider the sprawling set of cloud services theyve signed up for over the years, including deals they signed during the chaos of the pandemic shutdowns, Bhavsar says. And investors are taking note. Few people are calling themselves B2B SaaS investors anymore, even if they did that historically, he says.
Bhavsar says VC firms and their investors are showing an increasing appetite for new kinds of opportunities, including investments in computing hardware, data centers, physical computing, and robotics. Theres also a rising interest in so-called AI roll-ups, popularized by VCs like General Catalyst, where VC-backed businesses buy services businesses like IT companies, call centers, or accounting firms with the goal of making them more efficient through AI adoption. Its historically more like private equity investment, but the tech tie-in has made it appealing to the VC world.
The most interesting part right now is that any type of deal can be a VC deal, Bhavsar says. Any pitch can be a VC pitch if they pitch it right.
AI models, running on powerful graphics processing units like the ones that have helped chipmaker Nvidias market value skyrocket, could become the basis for a wide range of applications. (Its similar to the wave of software developed atop Microsoft Windows and Intel chips in the PC era, suggests Carmen.) VCs are looking to invest in companies building those AI-powered apps, though theyre also still enthusiastic about the frontier labs developing the models and core technology that help AI process text, images, video, and sound. That market, after all, still sees fierce competition among companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and new startup labs emerging like Muratis Thinking Machines or Tokyo-based Sakana AI.
I think there will be a lot more of these people coming out of the bigger names, or researchers coming out of academia wanting to start these research labs, says Christine Tsai, founding partner and CEO of 500 Global.
Theres also roomand VC appetitefor new, innovative AI models for other areas besides language and image processing, like autonomous vehicles and robotics. We believe there’s going to be a company that’s going to build the robotic brain, if you will, that will power many different apps, many different use cases, says Janelle Teng, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners.
Fintech, defense tech, and the rest
Still, AI hasnt completely captured the VC sector. Other areas seeing investor interest include fintech, particularly after the 2025 IPOs of companies like Klarna, Circle, and Chime, as well as space and defense tech, Teng says.
Space and defense startups also benefit from the Trump administrations push to overhaul military procurement and move business away from big defense contractors, while fintech startups may take advantage of the administrations deregulatory approach to finance.
VCs that in the past wouldnt have invested in defense tech have also been encouraged by the success of Anduril, according to Carmen, who notes that another area of excitement for VCs is health tech, including wearable technology and other tools that help provide consumers with information to manage their health.
One open question for VCs and other startup investors is whether the IPOs and acquisitions that characterized 2025 will continue into the new year. There was a lot more activity and liquidity in the markets, and we saw it in our own portfolio, in contrast to years prior, where it was extremely dry and felt like things were still frozen, Tsai says.
A number of big startups are reporedly preparing for IPOs, including AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic and Elon Musks SpaceX. Their success could spur more initial offerings. Those transactions provide early-stage investors with funds for the next round of investment, though with big companies staying private for longer than in previous tech booms, there are often other ways to sell stock through company tender offers and other private deals. And, if recent activity is any indication, theres no shortage of investor cash pursuing stakes in startups, particularly around AI.
Only time will tell, of course, which of those investments will prove wise, and whether the ever-escalating valuations of so many AI companies will last. The thing that’s hard to know is, are we in 1997, or are we in 1999, says Kaplan. VC investments in 97 did very well. VC investments in 99 did horribly.
2026 will be a crucial inflection point for businesses. The data are strikingthe proportion of employees using AI in their role in the U.S. doubled between 2023 and 2025. Across the Atlantic, 30% of EU workers are already using AI in their jobs. And according to Gartner, by 2026 more than 100 million workers will collaborate with robo-colleagues.
The question for the coming year, then, is no longer whether AI will transform your organization, its whether your leadership team will guide that transformation thoughtfully or let it happen haphazardly, tool by tool and team by team.
I have spent much of the past year working with my research team and industry partners to think through the most pressing challenges organizations face as they implement AI at scale.
Drawing on this work, I have identified seven key priorities for leaders preparing for 2026. These arent isolated tactics but interconnected imperatives that, taken together, provide a road map for building resilient, adaptive, and human-centered organizations in the age of AI.
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1. Embrace Regenerative Leadership Principles
Traditional leadership models that focus on efficiency and extraction are creating burned-out workforces and fragile organizations. As AI increases the temptation to pursue short-term gains, leaders must shift toward regenerative approaches that actively restore and enhance human, environmental, and technological resources.
Regenerative leadership means moving beyond sustainability to create systems that actually improve over time. This involves:
Adopting systems thinking to see your organization as an interconnected ecosystem
Prioritizing employee well-being alongside productivity
Measuring impact beyond profit to include ethical AI usage and community impact
Companies like Patagonia, Interface, and Unilever have demonstrated that this approach doesnt sacrifice performance. Rather, it enhances it through improved brand loyalty, employee engagement, long-term resilience, and higher growth.
The key is recognizing that AI should augment human potential, not exploit it. Leaders who build purpose-driven, people-centered strategies will create organizations that dont just survive disruption but evolve through it.
Read more: The age of AI requires a new kind of leadership
2. Transform Your Organization, Not Just Your Training
Most organizations treat AI reskilling as a training problem. But AI will cause systemic change that affects virtually every function and workflow, so preparing employees for the coming revolution requires more than just teaching them how to use AI tools. Fundamentally, it requires organizational redesignreimagining what work looks like in the AI age and transforming the organization to enable that work.
Success requires workin in three interconnected dimensions:
Rebuilding the infrastructure of work (providing the tools, data access, and workflow redesigns that make AI adoption possible)
Redesigning interconnected roles across the organization simultaneously (because when one role changes, every connected role must shift)
Cultivating a learning culture that prizes experimentation over perfection and treats failure as data rather than disgrace
Read more: What AI reskilling really requires
3. Master the Art of Leading AI-Augmented Teams
Throughout history, the core competence of leadership has always been guiding humans to achieve defined goals. But in the age of AI, leadership will take on a new meaning: leading hybrid teams in which humans and AI systems work side by side. Leaders must learn how to leverage the unique strengths of each while creating the context in which those unique strengths multiply by working in concert.
In order to succeed, leaders must:
Personally engage with AI tools themselves, so they can understand and eventually model effective collaboration
Cultivate clarity of purpose to discern what is actually worth doing in a world in which AI makes everything possible
Become moral agents capable of navigating urgent ethical questions surrounding the use of AI
Develop the enhanced emotional intelligence needed to guide teams through an often unsettling transition
Read more: The 7 secrets to successfully leading AI-augmented teams
4. Build a Balanced AI Portfolio: Moonshots and Mundane Wins
Successful AI transformation requires a well-balanced innovation portfolioa deliberately diversified mix of initiatives spanning different risk levels and time horizons. Leaders must grapple with big-picture questions about industry transformation while simultaneously identifying tactical opportunities for near-term deployment. The immediately practical projects create the foundationand fundingfor more ambitious undertakings.
Evaluating which initiatives deserve resources requires systematic assessment across multiple dimensions: technical feasibility, true investment costs (including organizational attention), risk-reward balance, alignment with core purpose, and realistic timeframes. In our book Transcend and a companion piece in Harvard Business Review, we provide comprehensive toolsthe OPEN and CARE frameworksfor this strategic evaluation and portfolio management.
Critical to all of this is engaged leadership at the C-suite level. CEOs cannot simply delegate AI projects to technical leaders. Instead, they must orchestrate the entire innovation portfolio to maintain strategic coherence.
Read more: Why your organization needs both AI moonshots and mundane wins
5. Protect Your Organizational Uniqueness
When everyone uses the same AI tools that have been trained on the same public data, outputs converge toward generic mediocrity. The quirks, the specific language, the unique ways of thinking that define your organization get smoothed into statistical averages.
Competitive advantage in 2026 will come from authentic differenceleaning into what makes you, you. You can do this by:
Auditing your uniqueness: Identify what is different and distinctive about your organization.
Creating proprietary datasets: Whenever possible, use internal data rather than generic datasets that everyone has access to.
Establish AI-free zones: Maintain places where only humans get to operate.
Adversarial prompting: Use AI to critically evaluate your conclusions rather than to confirm them.
The goal isnt to reject AI but to use it strategically while preserving the distinctive elements that make your organization valuable.
Read more: How AI is creating a crisis of business sameness
6. Reinvent Middle Management for the AI Era
AI is eliminating traditional middle-management functions at an unprecedented rate. Gartner predicts that through 2026, 20% of organizations will use AI to flatten their structures, eliminating more than half of current middle-management positions. And by 2028 and 2029, AI-driven jobs chaos will force organizations to reconfigure, redesign, split, or fuse more than 32 million jobs every year.
There are significant efficiency gains to be made here. But organizations must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Rather than simply trying to eliminate as much of middle management as possible, the task is to streamline it intelligentlymiddle management is still important, but its role must be fundamentally reimagined.
Orchestrating AI-human collaboration: Understanding how to integrate AI with humans
Serving as agents of change: Guiding organizations through continuous AI-driven disruption
Coaching for a new era: Mentoring employees through constant reskilling and role evolution
To successfully navigate this transformation, organizations must reskill middle management to enable them to succeed in their reimagined roles.
Read more: How AI is killing (and reinventing) middle management
7. Know When to Changeand When to Hold Steady
In a profoundly uncertain world, and a business environment in which the only constant is disruption, the most critical leadership skill of all might well be discernment: the wisdom of knowing what to preserve and what to transform.
Effective leaders distinguish between their organizations core identity (the what that they must not compromise) an their methods (the how that can be endlessly reimagined). In times of change, it is essential for leaders to be steadfast about the former while being completely flexible about the latter.
Read more: How to know when (and when not) to make a change
An Integrated Path
Not every organization will need to emphasize all seven priorities equally. A company with a strong and adaptable middle-management culture may focus elsewhere; one already grounded in regenerative principles can move quickly to portfolio building. The point is not to tackle everything at once but to recognize that these are the dimensions along which the AI transformation will play out, and to make deliberate choices about where to invest attention.
What leaders cannot afford is drift. Organizations that treat AI adoption as something that happens to themtool by tool, team by team, without strategic intentwill find themselves shaped by the technology rather than shaping it. The difference between leading and following in 2026 will come down to whether these choices are made consciously or by default.
The leaders who prepare their organizations for 2026 by tackling these priorities wont just survive the AI revolution. Theyll shape itbuilding organizations that are more resilient, more human, and more capable of creating lasting value in an age of unprecedented technological change.
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With President Trump back in the White House, this year has brought a barrage of executive orders and edicts that target workers. Trump reduced the minimum wage for federal contractors, made major cuts to the Occupational Safety and Health Administrationwhose express mission is to keep people safe in the workplaceand attempted to undermine collective bargaining rights for federal workers. He has also, of course, set his sights on dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs across both the federal workforce and corporate America.
Still, theres a glimmer of hope for workers: Many states have taken it upon themselves to enshrine policies like paid leave and pay transparency, with some of them now turning their attention to how the misuse of artificial intelligence in hiring could harm workers. Here are some of the laws and policies that will take effect in 2026many of which continue to push forward on important issues for workers despite what the federal government has in store.
Anti-DEI measures
Trump has made anti-DEI policies a focal point of his time in office, kicking off this year with a number of executive orders that forced federal agencies to terminate all DEI-related policies and programs and stripped away a requirement for federal contractors that had been a crucial element of diversifying the workforce. That means, going into 2026, all federal DEI programs have been eliminatedbut there are a number of state-level bills that seek to curtail how DEI is utilized in hiring and across public education.
In Ohio, for example, legislation that passed this year prohibits any consideration of DEI in hiring decisions at public colleges and universities. Similar laws in Kansas, Idaho, and Wyoming will curtail DEI programs for hiring across higher education.
Meanwhile, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commissionthe agency tasked with enforcing antidiscrimination laws in employmenthas made clear that corporate DEI programs will be under greater scrutiny going into 2026.
The use of AI in hiring
As companies have embedded AI into their hiring process, many HR teams have started relying on automated résumé screeners and other AI tools. In 2026, three laws will take effect at the state level to create some guardrails around how AI is being used for employment decisions, following in the footsteps of New York City and California, which have already adopted AI in hiring laws.
Colorado and Texas are introducing broader AI governance laws that also explicitly call for more oversight of how the technology is used in the hiring process to ensure it is not discriminatory. In Illinois, the law is an amendment of the states Human Rights Act and regulates how workers are impacted by the use of AI in all employment decisions. At the federal level, a bipartisan bill introduced in Congress last month wouldif passedforce employers to disclose when layoffs are caused by AI.
Minimum wage
The minimum wage continues to rise, year after year, as states have raised the wage floor in response to worker advocacy. As 2026 rolls around, 20 states will have enacted and started phasing in a $15 minimum wage, with hourly wages actually crossing $15 in a total of 11 states by the end of next year. Since 2012, a total of 15 states have adopted a $15 minimum wage, according to the National Employment Law Project, in no small part because of the Fight for $15 movement that originated among fast-food workers.
By the end of 2026, many workers will see even greater pay increases as the minimum wage is boosted to $17 across 53 cities and localities. A handful of states have also approved changes to the subminimum wage, which typically pays tipped workers a lower hourly rate. (There have been several proposals at the federal level to eliminate the subminimum wage altogether, but nothing has successfully passed.)
Paid leave
While the efforts to pass federal paid family leave have more or less come to a standstill, a handful of states have kept pushing to secure those benefits for their workers. In Delaware, Maine, and Minnesota, a paid leave program will take effect in 2026, joining 10 other states that have already introduced the benefit.
Meanwhile, states like Connecticut are making significant expansions to their paid sick leave program, now requiring companies with as few as 11 employees to provide leave. (By 2027, even employers with one worker will have to do the same.) In total, about 20 states now offer paid sick leave in some capacity, as these laws have picked up steam in recent years. A number of cities and localities also provide paid leave, even in states like Pennsylvania that dont have broader coverage.
Pay transparency
Pay transparency laws have grown in popularity over the last four years, in an effort to arm workers with more information as they go into salary negotiationsor before they apply for a job at all. These laws often require employers to disclose a salary range in all job postings, though some states have only mandated that employers verbally share salary information.
This year, Massachusetts and New Jersey adopted laws that require pay ranges in job listings, bringing the total number of states with these laws on the books to 14. At the local level, some cities in Ohio have started requiring salary disclosures, as is also the case in Washington, D.C. Salary transparency laws also often prohibit employers from asking about a candidates salary history during the interview process and using that to determine their compensation.
Lorrie Faith Cranors latest effort to educate people about privacy is a short, colorfully illustrated book written for an audience who probably cant read it yet.
Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Pittsburgh schools CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, wrote Privacy, Please! after publishing more than 200 research papers, spending a 20162017 stint as the Federal Trade Commissions chief technologist, and making a quilt and dress illustrated with commonly used weak passwords.
In a Zoom video call, Cranor says she got the idea for this self-published childrens book when planning for a privacy-outreach event at a local library and getting input from the librarians there revealed an unmet need for one. I asked them for their recommendations, and they didn’t know of any children’s books about privacy, she recounts. And you know, there really isn’t much out there.
Especially for a younger audience. The Eyemonger, a frequently recommended kids book by George Washington University Law School professor Daniel J. Solove published in 2020, is aimed at readers ages 6 to 9. Then I started thinking about, well, what would I want in a book for preschool kids about privacy? Cranor says.
[Illustration: Courtesy of Lorrie Faith Cranor]
The answer: 25 pages of her words and artwork by illustrator Alena Karabach, in which our nameless protagonist, often accompanied by a pet dog, turtle, and goldfish, explains basic concepts of privacy.
Sometimes I want to be alone. I dont want anyone to see me, hear me, or come too close. This is called privacy.
Sometimes I listen to music on my headphones so that only I can hear.
When my best friend comes over we play in my clubhouse. Its our private space!
Sometimes I want to create artwork without anyone watching.
Privacy can help us have more fun! Superheroes need privacy to put on their costumes.
My parents lock their phones so nobody can see their private things.
When I play games online I use a funny name and picture so strangers dont know who I really am.
Its nice to put my technology away and play outside where theres lots of privacy.
Cranor took inspiration for this from an earlier public-outreach project: Privacy Illustrated, a workshop she started in 2014 to invite people of many ages to draw depictions of what they thought the concept looked like. That, for instance, is where the turtle came from, she recalls. I had never thought about turtles this way until I saw people drawing pictures of turtles and saying turtles carry their privacy with them. The goldfish, meanwhile, is a finned metaphor for having no privacy at all. I told the illustrator, make the goldfish look as sad as you possibly can, Cranor says.
The first draft also included a dog giving himself some privacy by retreating into a doghouse. But the preschool teachers Cranor consulted pointed out that none of their city-kid students had doghouses and might not recognize a Peanuts reference anyway. Instead, the dog hides underneath a bed.
At no point do we see this childs entire face, a choice Cranor made early on.
I also wanted the main character to be a little ambiguous as to whether they’re a boy or a girl and what race they are, she saysthe idea being to give any child reading it a chance to see some part of themselves there.
Theres also little technology on display, aside from one page that shows the main character sitting before an iMac G4 that would now be at least 21 years old and so must be some sort of hand-me-down.
And any adult reader looking for explain-like-Im-5 advice about reading lengthy privacy policies wont find it in this slim volume. A lot of the more complicated lessons about online privacy just didn’t seem appropriate for this audience, Cranor says. But I didn’t want to not have digital privacy there at all, because, well, they’re already playing with their parents phones.
Plus, it wont be too long before the members of the books preschool audience will need some grounding in the basics of tech privacy. You know, next year they will be online, and so I wanted to plant the seeds for that,” Cranor says.
As for the parents, aunts and uncles, and other grownups reading the book aloud to children, Cranor says she hopes this work will encourage them to listen a little more. It’s okay to say you don’t want your picture taken, and this is a struggle for parents because parents love to take their kids’ pictures, she says.
The books website includes a discussion guide for parents as well as a door-hanger exercise for kids that invites them to make a version of a hotels door tag (Privacy, Please! or Lets Play!) for their rooms from a cut-up cereal box.
Cranor expects a large chunk of the sales of this $14.99 bookwhich she chose to self-publish after realizing that would take vastly less time than finding an agent to sell a traditional publisher on the ideawill involve other privacy professionals. They all want to buy it for the children in their lives,” she explains.
But another potential target market comes to mind: founders of large tech companies with a demonstrated record of paying inadequate attention to privacy and missing peoples tastes in technologin particular founders with young children of their on.
By which I mean, Mark Zuckerberg. Has Cranor sent him a copy of the book? I have not, she says. I mean, its probably worth trying.
The holiday season always reminds me that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. My kids start winter break thrillednew toys to play with, days at home, permission to veg out. But by the time the new year rolls around, theyre itching to go back to school, eager to show off their favorite holiday gifts and dive back into their routine.
It got me thinking: why dont we, as adults, approach returning to work after a vacation with that same positive energy?
More often than not, coming back from time off stirs up feelings of anxiety. For some, it reaches the point of canceling out any lingering benefits of the break. Others overcompensate by overworking upon their return.
Just as kids head back to school after winter break with renewed energy and a few shiny new accessories, we can return to the office with a sense of anticipation instead of dreadand without burning out right away. It all comes down to planning ahead and making smart use of the AI tools in your toolbox.
Here are some of the strategies that I use and share with employees at Jotform to help ease back into work after time away.
Automate the admin so you can focus on what matters
After spending the holidays with my family in the Turkish countryside, one of my favorite parts of returning to work is catching up with colleaguesswapping stories and photos from our OOO adventures. But I wouldnt have the time or energy to do that if I were buried under the tedious busywork of easing back into work mode.
Thats why I use, and encourage our employees to use, AI to automate as many manual administrative tasks as possible. It starts with an audit of your typical back-to-work routine, ideally before you leave the office, so youre prepared ahead of time. Make a list of every task in a normal day and all your responsibilities. Youll likely spot several that can be partially or fully automated with AIlike scheduling status meetings with Motion or Clockwise; taking meeting notes (and sending follow-up emails) with Fireflies.ai or Otter.ai; and managing your inbox with Superhuman, Shortwave, or Microsoft Copilot.
When you let AI handle the busywork, you create space for diving back into activities that you enjoy, like more meaningful creative work and reconnecting with your team.
Use AI to zoom out and see the big picture
Research shows that nearly half of American workers dont take all their paid vacation time. One of the main reasons is that they fear falling behind. That worry isnt entirely misplaced; stepping away from the daily grind does mean falling out of the loop for a bit. But its important to zoom out and keep your break in perspective.
Rather than focusing on the week-to-week, imagine that time off in the broader context of your year. Viewed this way, your vacation isnt a setback, but rather, its an investment in your long-term productivity. Studies consistently show that professionals who take regular breaks enjoy better sleep, higher job satisfaction, greater engagement, and stronger performance.
Compiling quarterly recaps is a great way to maintain that big-picture view and track progress toward annual goals. AI can do it for you. Tools like Notion AI, ClickUp Brain, or ChatGPT can take your company data and summarize project updates, highlight milestones, and visualize your progress, without you having to manually compile the reports.
Seeing your progress and achievements laid out explicitly can help you keep OOO time in perspective and eliminate the stress of falling behind when you return.
Reignite curiosity and your momentum
One of the biggest challenges of getting back on track after time away is momentum. When youre in the rhythm of work, collaborating with colleagues, or tracking project progress, productivity and ideation feel almost self-propelling. But after some much-needed R&R, getting that momentum back can feel like pushing a boulder uphill.
This is where AI can step in as a creative partner. Tools like ChatGPT can spark fresh ideas during brainstorming sessions, or analyze datalike marketing reports or customer feedbackto generate insights and actionable takeaways. By handling some of the initial heavy lifting, AI can help reignite the curiosity and creative energy that makes returning to work fun.
Finally, this may sound obvious, but give yourself time to ease back into work mode. Schedule some downtime, especially during the first week. Stagger your meetings, and resist the urge to burn the midnight oil right away. This can help prevent reentry shockthat disorienting jolt from relaxation to chaos. With a little thoughtfulness and some helpful AI tools, leaders and their teams can painlessly get back into the swing of things.
The United States hit Venezuela with a large-scale strike early Saturday and said its president had been captured and flown out of the country after months of intense pressure on Nicolás Maduro’s government an extraordinary nighttime operation announced by President Donald Trump on social media hours after the attack.
The legal authority for the strike and whether Trump consulted Congress beforehand was not immediately clear. The stunning American military action, which plucked a nations sitting leader from office, echoed the U.S. invasion of Panama that led to the surrender and seizure of its leader, Manuel Antonio Noriega, in 1990 exactly 36 years ago Saturday.
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, would face charges after an indictment in New York. Bondi vowed in a social media post that the couple would soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.
Maduro and other Venezuelan officials were indicted in 2020 on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges, but it was not previously known that his wife had been and it wasnt clear if Bondi was referring to a new indictment. The details of the allegations against Flores were not immediately known.
Early Saturday, multiple explosions rang out and low-flying aircraft swept through the Venezuelan capital, as Maduro’s government accused the United States of attacking civilian and military installations, calling it an imperialist attack and urging citizens to take to the streets.
With Maduro’s whereabouts not known, the vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, would take power under Venezuelan law. There was no confirmation that had happened, though she did issue a statement after the strike.
We do not know the whereabouts of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, Rodríguez said. We demand proof of life.
Maduro, Trump said, has been, along with his wife, captured and flown out of the Country. This operation was done in conjunction with U.S. Law Enforcement. He set a news conference for later Saturday morning.
The attack itself lasted less than 30 minutes and the explosions at least seven blasts sent people rushing into the streets, while others took to social media to report what theyd seen and heard. Some Venezuelan civilians and members of the military were killed, according to Rodríguez, the vice president, without giving a number.
It was not known if there more actions lay ahead, though Trump said in his post that the strikes were carried out successfully.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted on X that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had briefed him on the strike and said that Maduro has been arrested by U.S. personnel to stand trial on criminal charges in the United States.
The White House did not immediately respond to queries on where Maduro and his wife were being flown to.
Maduro last appeared on state television Friday while meeting with a delegation of Chinese officials in Caracas.
The strike came after the Trump administration spent months increasing pressure on the Venezuelan leader, including a major buildup of American forces in the waters off South America and attacks on boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean accused of carrying drugs. Last week, the CIA was behind a drone strike at a docking area believed to have been used by Venezuelan drug cartels the first known direct operation on Venezuelan soil since the U.S. began strikes in September.
As of Friday, the number of known boat strikes was 35 and the number of people killed at least 115, according to the Trump administration. Trump said that the U.S. is engaged in an armed conflict with drug cartels and has justified the boat strikes as a necessary to stem the flow of drugs into the U.S.
Maduro has decried the U.S. military operations as a thinly veiled effort to oust him from power.
Some streets in Caracas fill up
Venezuelas government responded to the attack with a call to action: People to the streets!
Armed people and uniformed members of a civilian militia headed into the streets of a Caracas neighborhood long considered a stronghold of the ruling party. As daylight broke, some people rallied and yelled Bring back Maduro! while holding posters of the leader.
In other areas of the city, the streets remained empty hours after the attack. Parts of the city remained without power, but vehicles moved freely.
Video obtained from Caracas and an unidentified coastal city showed tracers and smoke clouding the landscape as repeated muted explosions illuminated the night sky. Other footage showed cars passing on a highway as blasts illuminated the hills behind them. The videos were verified by The Associated Press.
Smoke was seen rising from the hangar of a military base in Caracas, while another military installation in the capital was without power.
The whole ground shook. This is horrible. We heard explosions and planes, said Carmen Hidalgo, a 21-year-old office worker, her voice trembling. She was walking briskly with two relatives in Caracas, returning from a birthday party. We felt like the air was hitting us.
The Venezuelan government’s statement said that Maduro had ordered all national defense plans to be implemented and declared a state of emergency that gives him the power to suspend peoples rights and expand the role of the armed forces.
The website of the U.S. Embassy in Venezuela, a post that has been closed since 2019, issued a warning to American citizens in the country, saying it was aware of reports of explosions in and around Caracas.
U.S. citizens in Venezuela should shelter in place, the warning said.
Reaction begins to emerge
Inquiries to the Pentagon and U.S. Southern Command since Trumps social media post went unanswered. The FAA warned all commercial and private U.S. pilots that the airspace over Venezuela and the small island nation of Curacao, just off the coast of the country, was off limits due to safety-of-flight risks associated with ongoing military activity.
The Armed Services committees in both houses of Congress, which have jurisdiction over military matters, have not been notified by the administration of any actions, according to a person familiar with the matter and granted anonymity to discuss it.
Lawmakers from both political parties in Congress have raised deep reservations and flat out objections to the U.S. attacks on boats suspected of drug smuggling on boats near the Venezuelan coast and Congress has not specifically approved an authorization for the use of military force for such operations in the region.
Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said the military action and seizure of Maduro marks a new dawn for Venezuela, saying that the tyrant is gone. He posted on X hours after the strike. is boss, Rubio, reposted a post from July that said Maduro is NOT the President of Venezuela and his regime is NOT the legitimate government.
Cuba, a supporter of the Maduro government and a longtime adversary of the United States, called for the international community to respond to what president Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez called the criminal attack.
Our zone of peace is being brutally assaulted, he said on X. Irans Foreign Ministry also condemned the strikes.
President Javier Milei of Argentina praised the claim by his close ally, Trump, that Maduro had been captured with a political slogan he often deploys to celebrate right-wing advances: Long live freedom, dammit!
By REGINA GARCIA CANO and KONSTANTIN TOROPIN
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Toropin and Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro reported from Washington.
The new year often brings sticker shock. A glance at our bank statements and credit card bills shows just how much we spent during the holidays, serving as a painful reminder that with the festivities behind us, we should work on getting our expenditures under control.
A good first step toward doing that is to cancel unnecessary subscriptionswhether thats Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, or any other service you pay for monthly but dont use. These unnecessary subscriptions can add upespecially as prices continue to rise.
A 2025 CNET report found that the average U.S. adult spends $17 a month on subscriptions they dont usethats more than $200 a year. (A Self Financial study from the same year found subscribers were wasting less on unused subscriptions$10.57 per monthbut thats still more than $120 per year).
Unfortunately, canceling a subscription isnt always straightforward. Yet if you want to stop burning through money in 2026, axing unnecessary subscriptions is essential. Heres how to quickly find and cancel yours.
Track down your forgotten subscriptions
Ive known people who were surprised to discover theyd been paying for a subscription for years that they had completely forgotten about, and thus had been literally wasting money each month on something they didnt even use.
Thats why, if you want to stop wasting money on unnecessary subscriptions, you first need to find all yours. Thankfully, the digital nature of the payment methods we use can help us track down forgotten subscriptions:
Check your bank and credit card statements for any recurring fees from the same vendor. This is the biggest tip-off that you have a subscription youve forgotten about.
If you tend to subscribe to services via apps on your iPhone or Android, you may have signed up for them using Apples or Googles in-app purchase system. Apple and Google both make it easy to see what recurring subscriptions you are signed up for. Heres how to find those subscriptions on an iPhone and on an Android phone.
You may have subscribed to a service via an apps dedicated signup page. You should check your account settings in all apps that offer subscriptions to see if you have any there.
People also often subscribe to streaming TV channels (like Hallmark+ or Crunchroll) through third-party services, so its smart to check if you have any recurring subscriptions on those platforms, too. Heres how to see if youre paying for any extra subscriptions through Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, or YouTube.
The points above arent exhaustive, but you should be able to find most of your subscriptions this way.
Cancel subscriptions using your iPhone or Android
Once youve tracked down all your unnecessary subscriptions, the next step is to cancel them. The cancellation process will differ depending on how you signed up.
If you signed up via an apps dedicated signup page, open the app and navigate to its account settings. You should see a subscription cancellation option there (sometimes the app may point you to a website, email, or phone number you need to use to cancel).
If you signed up via an in-app purchase on the Apple App Store, open your iPhones Settings app, tap your Apple Account name, and tap Subscriptions. Find the one you want to cancel there.
If you signed up via an in-app purchase on the Google Play Store, open the Google Play Store app and tap your profile, account, then Payments & subscriptions. Tap the subscription you want to find the cancellation button for.
Quickly cancel your subscriptions online
Finally, some subscriptions require you to sign up or cancel on a web pageor at least allow you to cancel from any web browser. Here are some shortcuts to help pages for common subscriptions that explain how to cancel them.
Amazon Music Standard
Amazon Music Unlimited
Amazon Prime
Amazon Prime Video
Apple Music
Apple TV
Disney+
DoorDash
ESPN
Grubhub
HBO Max
Hulu
Netflix
Paramount+
Peacock
Spotify Premium
Uber Eats
Uber One
YouTube Music Premium
YouTube Premium
