No slowdown: AI surge to power through 2026

A computer scientist speaks about the latest advancements in AI and what to expect in 2026.

The surge in AI advancement is one of the biggest tech stories of 2025. Time Magazine said it was the year when the potential of artificial intelligence roared into view when it pronounced the architects of AI the person of the year.

“AI as a tool became more and more integrated into our lives,” says Nur Zincair-Heywood, a computer science professor at Dalhousie University.

Weather prediction is a perfect example of how people have started using AI every day, according to Zincair-Heywood.

“It brought prediction from days, weeks, down to hours in terms of computational cost,” she says.

Savings in computational cost are also apparent where AI is being used as a decision support system, says Zincair-Heywood, who notes it is a powerful tool for medical diagnosis.

“For leukemia diagnosis, we’ve seen AI having a very good effect,” she says.

It is a technology, like social media, where people are interacting with chatbots and other agencies using AI every day, she says.

“We’ve seen AI more and more integrated to our search engines,” Zincair-Heywood says.

With so much use, Zincair-Heywood warns users need to be careful of AI’s negative consequences.

“More and more sophisticated phishing attacks,” she says.

Zincair-Heywood adds there have also been negative psychological consequences for some AI users.

“We’ve seen some very good positive effects, but unfortunately, we’ve seen some negative effects too,” she says.

“I think one of the things that we now need to start thinking about is regulations.”

Zincair-Heywood believes the increased sophistication of AI tools means we need education from elementary school through post-secondary.

“We need to integrate it so that people can understand how it is used,” she says. “And therefore, have a better way of differentiating maybe the real from the not-real.”

Zincair-Heywood says we need to raise awareness of the increased use and effect of AI. She says we should expect more personalized and specialized AI in 2026, and we should expect to see more people working with personal digital assistants.

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