Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images The first few weeks of 2026 saw yet another swing in popular narratives about AI. Toward the end of last year, notable AI insiders were expressing skepticism about the path ahead for research, and a financial bubble had become a topic of open conversation, even among implicated CEOs. Soon, though, updates to some major models would shift the industry’s focus again: Suddenly, they were much better at writing software. A lot of the surge in