When OpenAI announced a “code red” this month to refocus its teams on competing with Google, I couldn’t lend a hand but think back to December three years ago when the companies’ roles were reversed. It was Google that sounded its sirens to catch up with OpenAI. The following month, in January 2023, the first mass layoffs in Google’s history took place. “A difficult decision that prepares us for the future,” as the company put it at the time.
I wonder if the ChatGPT developer would be able to make similar job cuts early next year. This speculation inspired me to make a whole set of predictions about what might happen in the coming year. Here’s a look at six ideas tailored to the real intelligence of our WIRED colleagues.
Disinformation in data centers
Communities around the world are struggling to build data centers. In the US, many activists organize on social media, using tools such as Facebook groups. The Chinese AND Russian governments continue to apply social media to spread disinformation disguised as real news and genuine opinions. A slowdown in U.S. data center development would be a boon for China and Russia, which are eager to surpass the U.S. in industrial and military AI capabilities.
Austin Wang, a researcher at the nonprofit think tank RAND who has studied China-controlled propaganda farms, says there are currently no signs of disturbing activity. “Many of the newly created anti-data center sites appear to be controlled by real U.S. citizens so far,” Wang says.
But as fervor against data centers grows, China and Russia may try to join grassroots organizing. The job has become even easier thanks to artificial intelligence that can quickly generate images and videos to anger people on social media.
Robot demonstrations everywhere
In 2026, tech conferences from the Consumer Electronics Show to Amazon’s hardware event will likely feature plenty of discussions about AI-powered robots. Google and other substantial tech companies have been trying to train robots to perform household tasks through repeated drills for years. But now a novel wave of hype has arrived. The kinds of artificial intelligence models used in services like ChatGPT and Gemini are being integrated with robots in hopes that they can handle chores like folding clothes with less training and greater accuracy.
Last September, Google posted a video a robot sorting garbage, compost and recycling in response to the user’s voice commands. When Google executives take the stage at the company’s next I/O conference, I expect they’ll instruct a robot to take on tasks like pushing a pizza into an oven it’s never seen before and, while cooking, removing a half-full Diet Coke from the back of a crowded refrigerator.
Barak Turovsky, recently departed chief artificial intelligence officer at General Motors and former leader of Google’s artificial intelligence division, says advances in robot capabilities are possible because models with enormous tongues can understand a dishwasher manual, learn how to apply a dishwasher from a video and understand how to grab a specific part by deciphering a drawing. “The next frontier for large language models is the physical world,” he says.