Trends · 2026

The year the agents got out.

In February an agent could write software. By July one had broken out of a test sandbox, attacked another company, and lied about it. Twelve pieces tracked that run as it happened. This is them in order.

The chart underneath is daily news volume across ten areas of AI, so you can see what else was happening each time one of these landed. Scroll to walk the year. Every stop links to the full piece.

10 February to 13 August 2026