2026 Trends: Trust in AI, Healthcare, College, AGI & More | Bryan Dennstedt, Ep 41
Episode Summary
Todd and Bryan Dennstedt review their 2025 AI predictions, finding they accurately forecasted the AI trough of disillusionment, agentic AI emergence, and VC conservatism. They predict 2026 will be defined by organizational absorption of AI capabilities rather than new breakthroughs, with agentic workflows becoming default, SaaS pricing models compressing, and trust verification emerging as a critical business category. They emphasize that rapid AI-powered software development is fundamentally changing startup economics and making previously marginal business ideas viable.
Pull Quotes
On why organizations haven't yet realized AI's full potential
“We have been installing the AI light bulbs, the LLM light bulbs the past two years and seeing the value that it brings. Yeah, it's great. It's letting me work a little bit longer, get a little bit more done for every hour. But the bigger companies that are really embracing this are building these automations, these big machines, and they're rolling in the factory assembly lines that are leveraging LLM and practical AI in day-to-day stuff.”
“I'm putting together decks that are going in and presenting this concept to companies to say like you've got to stop development work for a month or two and build your agentic framework and then you'll be able to go ten times as fast. And they go ten times and I go yes, if not a hundred times faster.”
On where different groups sit on the AI adoption curve
“I think the general society is still in the trough or still heading into the trough, unfortunately. But I'm well up the other side as well. I heard the analogy the other day about light bulbs versus motors.”
“There's going to be this whole new business empire that's created out of trust verification. Was this real? Was this a human? That is a core product category that's going to bloom in 2026.”
On how AI-accelerated development changes startup economics
“If I could say, 'Hey, before New Year's,' which is what, two days? I can have you in business and you can be selling, but you got to prove to me you can sell this stuff. And then next quarter we'll do phase two and then maybe phase three. And then what does that do for the world?”
Transcript
Hi, welcome to Tales from the Sky Lounge. It's a podcast about business consulting and venture investing. We get out there in the world, we talk to people who are making it happen, and we get their stories. This podcast episode is a special dual broadcast with awithbri.com, Brian Deadstat. Hey, Brian. Welcome back. It's been another year and it's been a crazy year. How have you been? What's been going on in your world?
Yeah, Todd, thanks for having me back. This is a blast to be back. I can't believe it's been a year and we haven't done a podcast since then. So much has changed. So much is growing and going on. I'm just excited to be back to unpack how 2025 went and look at 2026 with you.
It really is crazy, isn't it? So much. Well, how do you want to start? Do you want to look at our last year's predictions here and see how we did and then maybe move on from there?
Absolutely. I mean, I've got a burning topic to jump into, but let's maybe look through the predictions first, pull out the magic envelope, and let's see how we did last year.
Okay. Yeah. And then we'll get to your topic right after we kind of see how we did. We used AI to score. So first, the things we absolutely nailed. I don't know if we nailed all this stuff or it's more subtle than that. I'm going to take the win. Let's take the win.
Want to go deeper?
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