AI Skills 2026 Conference
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a virtual 5+ hour webinar discussing all things AI. This conference seems to have been presented by those on the cutting edge of technology and thus was more on the STEM/technical side. Oh, the conference was titled AI Skills 2026 Conference.
High level takeaways
To summarize what stood out to me, here were the 4 top things I remember:
- Those in the tech fields are facing high expectations of in the job markets; they are expected to demonstrate practical knowledge of either using AI or creating products with AI.
- The roll out in finance is slower due to concerns about potential regulations, data privacy, confidentiality and hallucinations. The presenter of the finance section says to expect the transformation to take years.
- The current techie focus appears to be agents, agents, agents or vibe coding. There were quite a few sessions on vibe coding and agents.
- Prompting is now a commodity; it’s all about context engineering.
In addition, here’s an ironic thing noted in the session about viral LinkedIn marketing: participants in the panel all agree do not use AI to write your content!
There was one other maybe creepy thing and that was one session on using an AI tool to help you navigate your relationships, especially at work. If you think you are going to have an unpleasant meeting with someone, the tool can walk you through how to handle the conversation.
Latest news depressing
On top of the impression that we all need to know how to use AI, there are still periodic news of CEOs and senior executives still looking to cut labor costs as a way to meet labor demands to improve ROI on AI; in other words, use AI to replace workers.
One YouTuber gave his thesis as to why Amazon was doing “massive” layoffs in the last few months. I think previously Amazon said that 1) they hired too many people during the pandemic and 2) the AI was being deployed and they thus don’t need as many people.
The YouTuber said, no, it was because their cash flow went negative as they are plowing investments into the data centers. In order to return to positive cash flow and offset the negative effects of massive investments (negative now, hopefully positive in the future), they needed to lay off expensive people.
Who knows what are the real reasons?
But I do believe that CEOs and the executive teams are looking for ways to use AI instead of labor. One independent commentator said that the tech bros are looking to do the same to white collar labor as what was done to the blue collar labor – outsource the jobs elsewhere cheaper.
Aside from AI news…
A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I was in a meeting (probably around January 5) where someone mentioned that this year was going to be filled with crises, except for maybe a period of calm in June. This person talks a lot about astrology, and she had read 3 astrologers’ predictions for 2026.
Why do I bring this up as I don’t dabble in astrology? Well, it goes back to 2024, maybe June 2024 when this person told our group to be on the lookout for major things to happen during some timeframe in July. I think she said around July 14 to the 27th, but I can’t swear to it.
All I know is that when the first assassination attempt on Trump on July 13th happened, I thought, “wait a minute this is close or within her timeframe.” Again, I’m not certain on exact timing but I do know I was shocked that the incident occurred within or around her timeframe. I mean, astrology?
I told her I was shocked.
But then she said, “wait, there is probably more to come because the energy is still high”.
What could be more shocking?
July 21st was when Joe Biden bowed out of the presidential race, probably due to extremely poor debate performance on June 27.
So, with that astonishing history in mind, I do wonder if I should track events in 2026 to see if we maintain a running series of crises. The year has started out in a very astonishing and stressful way.
I might do a once a month review of whether we are in a series of constant crises.
Problem is: what constitutes a crisis? We didn’t talk about that. Also, were the crises on a monthly basis, weekly basis, daily? There was no clear articulation of what a crisis would be and the frequency, other than it was ongoing.
So anyway, let me list the possible crises happening in January. You may not regard them as crises but they do feel like crises to me, especially when I consider comments and reactions of others around me, including world-wide reactions.
- January 3: invasion of Venezuela. People feared for a while we were going to have ongoing war there.
- January 7: the first killing in Minneapolis (Renee Nicole Good). I wasn’t expecting violence to occur so early in the year; I was expecting it closer to the elections. (Before 2026 began, I was dreading the year due to the election cycle but I feared the violence more in the summer and fall.) Also, this event highlighted the bifurcated view of events: is it the blue/black dress or the white/gold dress?
- January 11 – 17: constant expression of desire to take over Greenland. Europeans were definitely freaked out about this one. Would we end up going to war over Greenland?
- January 18 – 24: second killing in Minneapolis (Alex Pretty). Videos I saw suggests that this was an execution since Alex was already down on the ground with maybe 5 or 6 guys on top of him. There was a frame where I could see a guy aiming down right at Alex as he was held down by 5 or 6 guys. This could be a crisis for both America and for the administration.
- January 25 – 31: okay here’s where things get wobbly. I can’t tell which, if any, is the real crisis. Or maybe none of them can be deemed a crisis.
- The release of the next batch of Epstein files. Is this a crisis for the administration, for the Republicans, for the elites?
- Raid of Fulton County voting records. This could be a voting crisis.
- Texas senate special election in District 9 swings heavily towards Democrat. A very red district going Democrat, first time since 1991 – that signals a strong crisis for Republicans
There’s enough in January to say there were quite a few crises. So, let’s see how February shapes up.
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