Ep 68: 2026 Predictions Episode
Watch the YouTube video version above or listen to the podcast below!
Episode Summary
In the final episode of 2025, the Enterprising Minds team reconvenes to reflect on prior tech predictions and set the stage for what’s coming in 2026. Using AI tools like ChatGPT to analyze past episodes, they provide a self-aware and often humorous review of their forecast accuracy.
🔄 Reflections on Past Predictions
Chatbots: Predicted mass adoption didn’t fully happen; instead, people still go to ChatGPT directly.
Ad Overload: Although advertising is ubiquitous, the predicted rebellion against it hasn’t materialized—yet.
eBooks vs. GPTs: Ruthi predicted GPTs would replace eBooks. GPTs did explode, but eBooks remain strong.
Custom GPTs: Increasing adoption, especially among influencers, but mostly used as experimental or niche tools.
🔮 New Predictions for 2026
AI Integration Winners: Google and Apple are predicted to dominate AI due to hardware reach and infrastructure.
Layoffs & AI Tension: Rising layoffs tied to AI productivity may cause workforce frustration and rebellion.
Workplace Distrust: Expect tension as AI blurs productivity lines—some may question if colleagues are doing real work or relying too heavily on AI.
In-person Networking: As AI and digital interactions rise, real-world connections gain renewed value.
🌐 SEO and Content Marketing Future
The End of Blog-Centric Marketing: Declining CTRs and zero-click search experiences will push brands to shift away from traditional blog strategies.
Discoverability vs. Findability: The new challenge isn’t just creating content but making it AI-digestible and findable in closed platforms like Gemini and ChatGPT.
Content Still King (But Different): Ruthi argues that brands still need comprehensive solution-oriented content to feed the LLMs and ensure discoverability.
⚙️ Tools & Tech Highlights
NotebookLM: Now creates AI-generated slide decks and even podcast-style recaps.
Workflow AI: Prediction that APIs and workflow automation will dominate AI integration across businesses.
AI Video & Presentation Tools: AI will increasingly generate short videos or visual explainers in response to prompts—especially for complex topics.
⚡ Other Notable Themes
Optimization Overload: An upcoming backlash to the constant barrage of hyper-optimized advice from AI tools.
AI Hardware: 2026 might bring the first widely adopted AI hardware—glasses, earbuds, or new phone forms.
Monetization Models: Subscription fatigue is real. The industry is still searching for the “killer business model” of AI—one that is additive, not annoying.
Ep 68: 2026 Predictions Episode Podcast and Video Transcript
Ep 68: 2026 Predictions Episode
Dave Dougherty: Hello and welcome to Enterprising Minds, the latest episode. We have the whole crew here, Alex and Dave. Uh, we're gonna have a little fun with this one, our last episode of 2025. Thank you all for listening to all of the episodes. Um, up to this point, we're approaching our fourth year, which is kind of hard to imagine.
Um. Another mental lapse.
Reflecting on Past Predictions
Dave Dougherty: I thought we did a predictions episode last year. We did not. So this year we're going to be looking at our last predictions episode, which I think is actually kind of better because, um, having that year or two gap from what we did to now has really actually shown more of the trend line instead of just the hype, which is nice.
So that's the, the fun and frolic we'll have today. We're gonna talk a little bit about how good or bad our predictions were. And then we're gonna make some for 2026. So, Alex, per usual, I'll kick it over to you and you can talk about your ideas.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, I had a bunch around two concepts that were definitely going on at.
Oh Earth, you got something?
Ruthi Corcoran: I do.
Using AI to Analyze Predictions
Ruthi Corcoran: Can you set us up with a context for what you did with ChatGPT to review all of our stuff, to get us the information we're about to share? Because I think this is pretty cool.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, so I definitely use chat GBT using our transcripts. So if you guys haven't been to the website, check it out.
Dave has posted transcripts from our episodes. There's the YouTube videos, if you wanna see the video version. There's a video version as well. And of course the audio version, if you're listening to that, we've got that everywhere as well. Um mm-hmm. Check those out because it's actually kind of fun to go through those.
Dave behind the scenes has also used Notebook, LM to go through all of 'em, kind of see how we speak, a little bit critiquing, but also recommendations on how we can work together better. What kind of main topics do we always talk about? You know, the perspectives we bring. And then just recently I used, yeah, chat, GBT to take a look at episode 19, so many episodes ago.
If you look at the one you're looking at right now to see what our predictions were and then Slic note by person and see if they're true or not. So. Mm-hmm.
Discussion on Chatbots and Advertising
Alex Pokorny: I'll hit some of mine really went in kind of two, two categories, which was one, especially this is very timely for Yeah. Close to two years ago, is chat bots, chat bots, explosion, and yeah, that didn't really happen.
Um, second, well, did the second one
Dave Dougherty: did explode. Just not in the way that you
Alex Pokorny: met. Yeah, I mean, I was really thinking that basically. With all the GBT style tools, people are gonna load a bunch of information into them and then you're gonna have a whole bunch of not great chat experiences, but they're gonna be just everywhere.
And we're seeing a little bit of that. There's definitely like a lot more of them than there were in the past, but they're really not quite out yet. It's much more of people using going to chat GBT to use chat GBT and then maybe linking off to do a purchase or something like that. They're not going to a website clicking the chat bot and having some grand ole experience with the thing or Hey, everybody's got an API connected to their chat bot.
No, they're using still third party software and stuff, so that might change. I still see it changing even the B2B world, uh, everybody's talking about it, so maybe that's changing. Um, but my other one was that advertising overload. Basically advertising's gonna be everywhere and there's gonna be some sort of like.
Rebellion or kind of just pushback against that. And yes, data privacy laws have increased over the last two years, even more longer term. If you look at some of the bigger jumps that have happened, there's more like five to 10. Mm-hmm. Um, and ads being everywhere. Yeah. That definitely is still playing true.
Um, ad blockers also on the rise, so kinda, but not really. I mean, I, I was talking about the ones that like now are being LCD screens on gas station, cooler doors and stuff like that, which still haven't really seen. So a lot of outdoor media stuff is still print, so I haven't quite got there yet.
Ruthi Corcoran: I wonder how much that is different depending on which part of the world you're in.
Alex Pokorny: Oh, absolutely. I mean, for sure the United State by City, not so
Ruthi Corcoran: much, but I suspect if you go to certain cities in. China or Japan, you're gonna have a very different experience.
Alex Pokorny: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I was thinking of actually Japan specifically, but if you're looking like Kyoto versus Tokyo versus a little bit, you know, further out, yeah, you can probably see that whole differentiation all across the board, but it hasn't really seen the, the pushback against it.
I don't know. I rip on recipe sites all the time and I'm still going to it. That hasn't changed for two years and I think I'll continue making fun of them for another year at this point. It's a bias,
Dave Dougherty: right?
Alex Pokorny: It kind it's kind of sense though. Too many ads. And I don't care about your grandma's. I Apple buy your recipe.
I just want the ingredients. Just gimme the stupid ingredients. Anyways, yeah, those were mine. Ruthie, do you wanna kick off to the next ones? I will. Pull us into yours and then into our new ones.
Ruthi Corcoran: Yeah.
Ruthi's Predictions and Reflections
Ruthi Corcoran: And I should caveat with this, I did apparently a lot more speaking in episode 19 and just mm-hmm.
Pontificating about what I thought the future was gonna look like. So I have a couple more than Alex. Um, you're pretty prolific.
Yeah.
So the first one, which is my favorite, 'cause I definitely have a bias in the area, which is eBooks are out and GPTs are the new thing with the idea that content creators and brands would have their own custom GPT that you could interact with.
Um. This was probably coming off of Tyler Cowen did a book where you could both read the book, but you could also interact with the GGPT. So I was like, oh, that's a cool idea. That's probably the future of eBooks. That's probably what it is. Um, I, chat, GPT was very kind in saying this was partly right, but overstated in that GPTs have exploded.
But eBooks are still a thing. I think it was being kind, I think that this prediction of mine is just nonsense. Like I don't think at this point people are interacting with specific creators, gpt they're instead, or at least this is my little bubble. I'm so curious to hear Alex, Dave, what you've seen. Like I'll use prompts from content creators that I'm, I care about, or that, or influencers or whatever you wanna call.
I'll try their prompts, I'll hear what they have to say about it, but I'm not interfacing with something they've created on a day to day.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, I think. There's a love hate thing with eBooks, right? But if you look at the publishing industry, they have managed to survive Amazon. They've managed to survive like almost everything from the 14 hundreds on, right?
So, um, I think eBooks will be around for a very long time. I think the regular publishing industry, while changing, will be around for a very long time. The one thing that I will say I did find interesting was Ray Dalio did like a fourth book in his series on sort of everything he knows on financial markets and global finance and, all these things.
And with the release of his fourth book, not only did he add everything to his website where you get all the additional charts and facts and you get the book, you get access to his site, you get access to all the PDFs and downloads. But then with the last one, he also put all of those things as a knowledge base into an AI so that you could leverage it for your own questions about the book or his perspectives around what he's written in the last, you know, four books.
So I thought that was an interesting use case where he's, his goal really is to try to disseminate as much sort of financial literacy as possible. You know, and it's not how to balance your, your budget at home, but really, like, this is how money works. And these are the, the systems, um, and behaviors that have been happening over.
A millennia and not just right now. I would, you know, I would agree, I think with the grade that chat GBT gave you, where I know you wanted eBooks to die, but I don't think they will. But, you know, if Ray Dalio's, playing with your idea, that's a pretty good, pretty good hat tip.
Alex Pokorny: I was gonna say in the last probably three months, I could probably name five or six influencers who have made AI versions of themselves available on their websites, where you can interact with them based upon all the things that they've said and their information, that kind of thing. It's, I think, more of a playground kind of tool right now.
Mm-hmm. Um, but it's a crazy concept. You could definitely see where that could continue, especially with, people have made those prompts in the past too, of act like your Socrates and let's have a discussion, that sort of thing with, you know, someone who has passed, but current authors doing that would be fascinating.
Especially those who are much more in the lecturer, even podcast side who have new thinking and new thoughts kind of being added to them all the time.
Ruthi Corcoran: Here's my use case for that, even though I don't see it taking a lot, I don't know if it's gonna get traction. We'll see. Uh, it might, maybe it needs to shift into a slightly different form.
I'm not sure I will use at work. Different writers or different podcasters like, tim Hartford, Adam Grant, like different, to give you two examples. Mm-hmm. I'll say like, you know, if it's, if I'm putting together interview questions or I'm trying to think through like, an end of your evaluation, I'll say, okay, now gimme a series of questions as if you were Adam Grant.
And it changes the whole tone in a really cool way and I found it very helpful for my ability to think and sort of figure stuff out.
And of course, the problem is that it might not be the, it might not be as accurate to Adam Grant as maybe like an Adam Grant. GPT would be where I'd be, I would ask the Adam Grant's GPT questions all the time.
I'm like, tell me about this. Sure. What do you think about this? Because there's only so much time I have to listen to all of his podcasts or read his books, like he's just a prolific content creator. Like that's kind of cool.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. I
Ruthi Corcoran: don't know how niche it is.
Alex Pokorny: I was trying to remember that term of being like friends with an influencer.
Oh, what's that phrase? It's where you feel like you're friends with someone who you, you've never met. You know, it's a one sided relationship.
Ruthi Corcoran: Yeah.
Alex Pokorny: And I, I wonder was it para parasocial? Parasocial, yeah. Yeah. Or you feel like, you know, this podcast or influencer or something, but really you've never had a con real conversation with them in life.
Mm-hmm. Um, I wonder if that's really gonna just keep on expanding where your people have these, ongoing, all day long conversations with their favorite influencer, and then mm-hmm. They're a whole different little world than what the person has actually ever said. You ask Adam, it's
Ruthi Corcoran: super weird super quickly, right?
Because it's not I know person and I mean, you're probably just getting the positive Polish side, not the, or Gru, youre asking them I didn't eat.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, you're asking them topics that they've never, you know, expressed an opinion on and now it's just coming up with something and who knows where that rabbit hole goes.
I mean, it also like never beginning of it, it was like, huh, I wonder if an, incognitive version of Chachi PT could say in the form of myself based upon all the transcripts that we have out here. How would I answer this? That'd be, that's weird, but it's also like, am I famous enough for Wikipedia?
It's, that's kinda like the new version of that. Like am I famous enough that check GBT knows enough about me that I come to a conversation with the GBT version of myself? Ugh.
Ruthi Corcoran: Actually,
Dave Dougherty: I would, I would love that. It would be more like, it wouldn't quite be like the Monday. GPT, but I think it would be fairly close.
It would just be so obnoxiously practical that, but
Alex Pokorny: Alex, you suck at routines. Shut up, Alex.
Don't gimme that advice.
Dave Dougherty: You know, it was funny, Ruthie, you, you talked about, you know, changing the, the speech like slightly by doing Adam Grant, like I found myself leveraging an AI at work this week and I was kind of off put by the by the messaging and I couldn't really put my finger on why. And so I just put more East Coast, less California.
Submit that, and then I'm like, oh, there it is. That's how I wanted it.
It was immediately more direct, less flowery, you know, it was just like, it was way more palatable to my brain. Which is kind of funny where it's like you could have a super optimistic EOR all of a sudden you know, based on, based on, you know, the inputs, which would just be weird. Bringing it back to the eBooks piece though, I do wonder if that's not something that the publishers are considering, you know, as kind of an add-on where it's like, Hey, we have this house of creators, that are sort of within our, our publishing.
Here's some training data based on the, on your favorite, you know, whatever.
Alex Pokorny: Time Clancy books and man, you would have to, you
Dave Dougherty: would have to pay the creators a lot, I think for that kind of access. 'cause you know who's responsible for the output.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. I'm, I'm thinking of states of past writers who are popular.
If you look at most like Time Clancy books, there's a ton of movies and TV shows out from that particular author as well.
It's ghost written already. Mm-hmm. It's not involved actually. Sure. Um, if currently creating anything or not, but that you could totally see them using this as an expansion tool saying like, you need 10
Dave Dougherty: more books just like him.
Wait, there's like 18 Jason Bourne books. Robert Ludlum only wrote four of them. Yeah. Yeah.
Ruthi Corcoran: All right. Dave, you said you're setting a timer, so I'm gonna move us on.
Dave Dougherty: Thank you.
Ruthi Corcoran: And I'm gonna rapid fire a couple of these. I'm not even gonna do all of them. So one of 'em. Style explosion of gpt. So like I think I said, Hey, you're gonna be able to create your own GPT.
We're already seeing this. Everybody's gonna create their own GPT and then we're gonna have just this glut and we're gonna have a huge problem with being able to filter them.
Chad? GPT said I was accurate. Yeah.
At some point in 2024, I don't have to read email because AI does it for me. That was a quote.
Dave Dougherty: I do appreciate your optimism generally.
Ruthi Corcoran: I, the response from Chad g pt, which I think is true, is technically enabled uneven in reality. And what I find happens is I do use co-pilot to summarize my emails just so I can just roughly stay on top of what's going on. But I, of course have to go into my email to click the accept button on all of the events.
So that has not come to pass, which is a surprisingly large part of how I interact with Outlook these days. It's just hitting the accept button on things. And I still am not at the point where I fully trust the summaries. And so I'll do a quick visual over anyways because I wanna make sure like nothing was missed or nothing was sort of caught in the rug.
And then last but not least, the enterprising Minds GPT bot will be available. And I said enterprising. GPT bot is a not if, but a when. And guys, I feel like we haven't gotten there.
Dave Dougherty: We could, we, we could easily I have, I'm gonna give you a partial grade on this one because for our own internal purposes, we have a lot of gpt.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: You know, we even tried stitching together them into the kind of agentic flows this year that didn't really work with the state of the tech when we tried it. If people are willing to reach out and tell us that that's important to you, I'm happy to go down that path. But I think at this point we will, we'll keep 'em in-house until I, and that's a huge credit to you,
Ruthi Corcoran: Dave, like you've done a ton to say, how can I improve the process of producing. Podcasts. Like what does that look like?
How do I get the transcripts out? Like, the volume that you've created and the ability to like keep on track is a hundred percent on you for sure. Thanks.
Dave's Predictions and Reflections
Ruthi Corcoran: I'm gonna pass the mic over to you though 'cause you've got a few predictions from our 20 or from our 19th episode.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, I think so. One of mine is a, a good follow up to yours.
Totally unplanned. So look at how good we are. Mine was, everyone can ship a bot, but most won't sustain one.
Um, and I think that is largely true. I'm gonna give myself a high grade on that one. Because honestly, like with what I'm experiencing with a lot of, a lot of coworkers and a lot of peers is that their awareness of AI is there.
They know they should be using it. They don't know what their entry ramp is, you know, or it's so tactical that they're missing like 80% of the value they could be getting with their job. So yeah, while, while a lot of people can create one it's really hard, even if you're in a, in a larger organization, I know I've experienced this, I'm currently fighting this one right now is getting, you know, you can pilot it, you can create it, you can show the validity of something that you've done, but then to make that stick within the organization as a useful thing is so hard and you have to ask yourself, is it worth the fight?
Yeah, that, that part of like human nature hasn't changed, like at all. So I thought another one of mine was the thin GPT wrapper Startups will Die. That, I'm gonna say C plus B minus on that one. What a lot of things that died were the AI hardware things, right? Like the AI lapel pin that was, uh, recording everything and violating privacy. The
yeah, I mean, that kind of stuff was just, you look at it and you're like, that's weird. Why would I do that? Like, it just, it seems so Silicon Valley, where it's like, if you're out of the valley, it doesn't make sense, but if you're in it, that makes total sense, right? But I do think we're gonna start seeing some things like recently, you know, SEMrush being, uh, acquired by Adobe.
I think getting a lot of these sort of web two startups into the models of the larger incumbents, I think is gonna be a thing that we see. Which is, you know, kind of related, related to this. My final one, which will go into my predictions for 2026. So back, back when I said Apple and Google will launch integrated LLMs.
So I did not expect Apple to drop the ball as much as they have on Apple Intelligence. Siri continues to suck. Yeah, it just started. And and Gemini is, uh, continually improving it. I'm actually with the latest release of Gemini three. I am, um, really surprised at how much more I'm using Gemini than chat PT now.
It is that much better. So, so I mean that one, that one was kind of a, that was kind of a gimme a gimme one.
Future Predictions for 2026
Dave Dougherty: So my predictions for 2026 and this will be fun 'cause then we'll mark our calendars for next year, next December we will. We'll take a look at this and, and see how wrong we were again.
But I think Apple and Google will largely win. The AI battle shearly mostly because of their hardware distribution. I think that's gonna play more of more of a role in building out the ecosystems. Especially with how
Especially with how Google's integrating Gemini into everything else, right? Um, that distribution and the fact that they're profitable and not gen, you know, begging for money in order to build their infrastructure, uh, is gonna be a massive, a massive boost for them. The reason I'm not including like Amazon or Microsoft is that they're playing in enterprises and enterprises are so slow to adopt, whereas Apple and Google can add it into things that people don't even.
Know our ai, it's just a useful thing.
Alex Pokorny: Thoughts on that? I think it's gonna be one of the biggest things we're gonna have to watch. Mm-hmm. I've talked about it before about the infrastructure part. Like the internet in reality is a bunch of hardware. Yeah. It's such of hard drives and it's bunch of wires.
That, that really is the internet and a, and a key piece.
Ruthi Corcoran: Mm-hmm.
Alex Pokorny: And the problem with any search engine is having an index, a copy of all of the world's information webpages. That's an insane amount of data. And honestly, the drives fail all the time. You have to replace them. The electricity costs, heat costs, location, and latency issues.
Right. There's a whole bunch of problems that Google has figured out and Microsoft has struggled with. They have never really gotten up to old JavaScript abilities. Interactive text and video is just massive data files and they struggle with them. Current LLMs struggle with looking at videos like it's.
There's a lot of barriers, very physical moats and barriers to entry there. And I think the partnership between Microsoft slash Bing and OpenAI would be the top one that I would watch of. Mm-hmm. Do they rely on that partnership? Do they get closer? Do they buy Bing from Microsoft or something? You know, like how big of a deal is that?
That basically chat GD finally can basically compete against Google's search plus Gemini? Exactly what you're saying. That ability, there is a huge moat that they have to figure out and traffic and others, maybe they spiral off into other little niche areas like you mentioned, like Microsoft just go on Enterprise or mm-hmm.
Claude goes more government slash schools or something. I don't know. Yeah, that's a big one. That's a big one, Dave.
Dave Dougherty: Mm-hmm. And I also think too, like, you know, if you look at that. Relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft. If OpenAI goes Kablam, I would, I don't know the contract, obviously they don't make that public, but ultimately, like what do you think would actually happen?
It just goes into Microsoft and now they have all that ip, so
Alex Pokorny: yeah, my concern is they won't activate on it because like if there were right, two more software friendly companies, let's say it was Salesforce or HubSpot, I would say they'll probably buy each other and combine. But since it's Microsoft, the behemoth that moves at the speed of, of behemoth, right, very slow, very fractured, slow to react to market like that one, I don't think you'll, even if again, open AI goes bust and they buy it, they're still not gonna be able to make use of it.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, that'd be a blast. Anyway, I think that one will be a fun one to watch another fun thing in a very nerdy way. I think we'll see our first legal trials around, uh, disclosures to AI as anti-competitive. Depending on how you wanna debate it, right? In all of our employment contracts, it says, don't leak info to the enemy.
Mm-hmm. Right? Like mm-hmm. Competition. It's not that much of a stretch and I don't know, I'm not a lawyer, but I know a bunch of 'em. For, you know, leveraging a lot of the old frameworks on the new realities, I think, disclosures from, inside an organization to an LLM will be treated if it's not authorized as a vendor, will be treated as any competitive behavior.
So I think it'll be ing to see if there are some trials around that. Who gets, um, who gets to be the first for those things.
Alex Pokorny: There's some surveys just came out saying that over 50% of users who use AI frequently, which is the majority of corporate workers now at this point, um, over 50% of them have used company data in the lm.
So Oh my God, that's rampant. Like, not even just like a little bit like that's a lot. Pretty rampant.
Ruthi Corcoran: Yeah.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. Yeah. That's a mess. Yeah, we have talked about that a little bit too, of like, AI gets better the more context you give it. However, AI gets more of a security risk, the more data you give it, and it's.
It's the fight of it versus marketing, which we always come against, you know, some similar security issues of vendors and stuff like that. On a company wide scale though?
Ruthi Corcoran: Yeah.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, those company policies, that's gonna be an interesting one. And you'll see that before the disclosure lawsuits. But what company Enterprise Standard contract, you know, or internal policies become, everybody will finally get up and put one together.
Probably. That would be a good one.
Dave Dougherty: If they don't have 'em now. My God. You like, why are you waiting? I don't,
Ruthi Corcoran: and hot take on this one. I think Microsoft might be one of the winners of any of those sorts of lawsuits in that. Go pilot is for enterprise and they've done's ton of the hard work to make sure that businesses can set up sort of secure internal ecosystems and also have access to LMS like,
Alex Pokorny: and for the small business side, Google Workspace Gemini just released that workflows that connect to everything, Gmail and sheets and everything together using Gemini.
Dave Dougherty: Mm-hmm.
Alex Pokorny: Wall gardens,
Dave Dougherty: which is, thank you for saying that Alex. 'cause that was, uh, the transition into my last my last one. So this is related to a presentation I did recently around, uh, A-I-O-G-E-O-S-E-O and the AIO use of digital marketing now, right? Sometimes Why? Sometimes why?
Definitely sometimes. Why? Findability and discoverability are gonna be the main buzzwords, right? What's old is new again, with PR activities and being in person and having a central narrative and just pounding the pavement with that narrative so that you can build the reputation, um, build that trust, build that authority, um, really honestly leveraging the EEAT guidelines, not just as SEO things, but as content pillars for your social media, for your go to market strategy with your marketing.
That ultimately in my mind, sunsets the open web of Web 2.0 and the maturing of the walled gardens and the zero click marketing and going, out of performance marketing into or back into brand marketing where we don't necessarily know what 50% of our marketing budget works. You know, the famous quote from the old P and GCMO.
But yeah, that one I'm, I'm the most interested in watching because I know a lot of people who have come up in the Web two world where, oh my God, I don't have to take any kinda risks. I don't have to stick my neck out because I can just say, we have the data to support this decision. And then you look really smart and, you can go about your merry way without ever having to take any risks. And I think that's gonna have to go away. And you're gonna have to figure out what you're willing to risk some of your reputation on with your decision making, which for me is exciting. It adds a little fun to the day. What do you, what do you guys take, what's your hot take on that one?
Ruthi Corcoran: I had a softball in my list, which is everyone will realize content is still king and SEO O is so important for AI because mm-hmm. AI is sitting on that basic foundation, but the way that L lms interact with web content is different. And so there will be a whole host of new fancy ways in which we can all optimize our content and we can, we can sell our services to optimize our content for a EO and a IO and E-I-E-I-O.
Alex Pokorny: Bingo was his name. Nope, I went a different direction.
Ruthi Corcoran: Alright.
Dave Dougherty: Um, are you bringing in the EOR energy? Is that what your plan is?
Ruthi Corcoran: Oh, best place. Let's go. No,
Dave Dougherty: I
Alex Pokorny: It's a little combo, a little bit off to the side. So call it Mambo number six. Um, basically this is a fun episode.
Decline of Traditional Websites
Alex Pokorny: Um, websites I think will continue to decline in upper funnel traffic, which is the majority of traffic.
So as those click-through rates decline, and as you're right, the data and discoverability kind of piece there, which is I can show that SEO did X and I can show that referral traffic did y as that data declines literally the visits and leads and everything else from that declines, that means. Having every B2B have their own blog, because my gosh, we all need to have a blog will also decline because there's no point in posting a Wikipedia style article of, this is the generic thing about my industry.
Thanks for all the high schoolers out there and anybody who's industry professional already knows this kind of stuff. Those kind of blog posts will be gone. So as you start to cut down that website, now you're cutting 'em down and down and down. They're losing their content and they're kind of losing their content edge because you're using these AI tools so heavily, you're not using the website content anymore.
So then what's the point of a lot of content marketing? It declines. Same thing with paid search, to be honest, as well as organic search. So what do you get down to?
The Future of B2B Content
Alex Pokorny: You get back down to, I would say almost like the days of Yellow Pages and online directories, because you're getting down to just the product, just the solution and just the differentiation, and then trying to tack on your added brand benefit on top of that.
If you strip away all the rest of the extra content that's out there, there's not a whole lot left. So that means your, your website now is much more stripped down and honestly, a lot of the B2B sites out there are perfectly suited for that. The thing that they're usually missing is the solution aspect.
They have the product piece, they have the brand about us piece, but they don't really have, this is the solution where our products provide how to actually use this in the real world. It's, we manufacture X Hope you know how to use it
Dave Dougherty: well. Don't you think this has always been the friction? You know, at least, I mean with all of our stuff that we've talked about with B2B is largely like you should go do SEO, do all these mass communications and they're like, why?
I have six. I build stuff. Clients like my product goes to six companies. I don't need to talk to everybody. I know Bill, George, John, and Jenny like, call 'em every year, go to their Christmas priorities.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, that's it. Yeah, no, I think that's, that's the friction that has existed that I think will finally become rather pointless.
AI's Role in Content Discoverability
Alex Pokorny: There will be, I still think the directories, I'm not gonna lose that part. There will be other ways, kind of like the Google shopping method of things where you have to submit your file and you have to submit your data. There will be other ways to optimize and then those will be more easily to ingest for AI tools that'll actually be pulling from those versus actually looking at your site.
Go ahead.
The Importance of Solution Data
Ruthi Corcoran: Oh, I'm so excited to see how this plays out because I, you are telling me all of this and I'm going, but this just reinforces my whole idea and this whole point be like, and you need the solution data and therein lies why I think content is still key. I You're missing the whole funnel. Yeah. The top of the funnel.
Yeah. A hundred percent agree with you there. Like that. You're not getting the, the sort of top level stuff. People aren't going to your website to find out where's it gone, how the thing is. Right. They're asking GPT and they're getting dropped in at the end. But in order for the, the Gemini, forche, PT for Claude, et cetera, to know where to send people.
And ultimately they're trying to get somebody to take action and a lot of the actions are on the website. They need a ton of information about what different companies do, whether or not they provide a very specific tailored. Solution to what the person is asking about. Right.
AI in Healthcare and Local Services
Ruthi Corcoran: So, you know, I had a recent discussion with Gemini and Chat GPT where I was trying to better understand the diagnosis I had and like, is this a thing?
Do I need a second opinion? Who should I go towards? Et cetera, et cetera. Chat. GPT was like, here, let me give you a summary. And Gemini was like, here, let me give you local results and let me tell you which of those local results meet the exact need that you have based on your, based on what you told me and based on their website.
And so now the impetus is for all those local websites to put as much detail about here's the specific service and solutions we provide. Mm-hmm. So that the Geminis of the world make sure that the customers find them. There's maybe the, I think you, yeah. The contrary to what I just said is your comment about the shopping results, which is, maybe it goes back to this idea of you just upload an Excel spreadsheet of here's the things that I provide, tell it directly to Google, Gemini.
Gemini can then tell people, but I, I, I don't know. That seems a stretch. Like web is such a, websites are such a part of our infrastructure.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah, that's a really, that's a really good point. So I've seen, sorry, Dave, you're you're, you're right on the cusp of something. Go for
Dave Dougherty: it.
The Evolution of PR and Content Volume
Dave Dougherty: Yeah, no, I was gonna say, and what, what Ruth you says goes back to my initial point, which is if you look at pr, it's about the volume of the message being said over and over and over again on multiple platforms, right?
It's not enough just to go onto M-S-N-B-C and say your phrase, you also have to hit Fox. You also have to hit B bbc. Sure. You have to hit Al Jazeera, right. And then all of a sudden it's like, wow, look at that. That's an authoritative position. Right. So, and we know that the LLMs right now are looking at.
Volume of phrases, not necessarily, how accurate or authoritative it is. So by leveraging the platforms your audience is in, and by getting those things out on multiple platforms, there's still a need for content. You know, if you draw somebody into your content ecosystem, then they're able to play around with you because they know, like, and trust you.
This is a
AI's Impact on Content Marketing
Alex Pokorny: really good topic that I've literally been, um, pitting Claude Gemini and Chacha bt against each other the last couple of days. Mm-hmm. Trying to come up with a new answer for basically what is the new version of content marketing, because obviously with click through rates, what were, what, like SEO and paid search alone ain't enough.
Ruthi Corcoran: Yes.
Alex Pokorny: So this is really interesting because I have also seen AI use very, very. Bare basic spec sheets almost
Ruthi Corcoran: mm-hmm.
Alex Pokorny: Of products and suggest them as solutions. So the website did not provide the data and the information. It was available enough on random forms, training data, et cetera, that's out there to line up that this particular company was the right one, the highest quality one, et cetera.
And this particular random object was the solution to the problem. So how much of that do you provide? And maybe that is, maybe that's the competitive edge.
Oof. That's a disparate market. Mm-hmm.
Predictions for AI in 2026
Ruthi Corcoran: Part two, I think we're gonna have to bring this one back up, but Alex, do you wanna give us your predictions?
Alex Pokorny: Oh yeah. Got a list of them. One of the first ones AI is gonna start producing short video as a prompt reply to explain visual topics. It might be a more of a 20, 27 thing, but I really hope it gets there.
That's
Dave Dougherty: cool.
AI in Presentation and Content Creation
Dave Dougherty: Have you played around with Notebook LM recently? They haven't. I put in, so I was creating a, a presentation for my day job, and it was a qualitative review of, you know, a whole bunch of influencers and tool sites, their blogs on, AI and state of AI and all of that, right? And so Ruthie to your ebook prediction as an optional extra, I put at the end of my presentation, here's a notebook, lm, go play with the sources and ask your own questions of it so that you can learn more about the topic and whatever.
But Notebook, LM has a feature now where it will create a video slide deck of the sources that you put in there, and it will basically create the presentation for you and have the AI voice and everything in there. You can also do a short overview. Audio podcast, or you can change the link to like an in-depth, hour long podcast on whatever you, you put in notebook.
LM is seriously good if you've been sleeping on it. Go do it. Go do it. Yeah. That, that, uh, was my second
Alex Pokorny: prediction then. Apparently it's already, so I'm late which is AI image generation and PowerPoint slide creation will become easy and reliable. 'cause it sucks right now with most of 'em.
Mm-hmm.
Ruthi Corcoran: Um, still a valid prediction, right? Yeah. I don't know that copilot does this so well. Super. Right. So it's that for enterprise where people actually want the PowerPoint slides.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, Ethan Molik had a, um, a post on this where he took a bunch of his research papers and had to create slides.
And yeah, it was interesting to read through that. Um, as a use case, I think, yeah.
Optimization Overload and AI Rebellion
Alex Pokorny: Number three, we will start feeling optimization overload. I think with all the advice given from chat GBT and availability of all that information, it's a little too much. Mm-hmm. And there'll be a phrase for it of some sort.
Ruthi Corcoran: What does optimization overload feel like? What,
Alex Pokorny: like what, what would be a good workout plan? Well, here's exactly personalized for you, the exact workout plan, but also here's your sleep routine and also here's how you should make your meal tonight. And here's based on the seven things that you have inside your fridge, here's the meal that you can make in 20 minutes and whatever else.
It's like constant solutioning. Mm-hmm. Which adds so much extra complexity. And to review all that information, discern through all of it, instead of being like, I don't know what I'm gonna make, I guess I'm gonna do something really basic. Or you go through this gigantic process every single time and you start to like, just be like, this is too much.
Dave Dougherty: It's like a, it's like a bad, medication, commercial side effects might include depression, anxiety, isolation, don't need
Alex Pokorny: those things.
AI and Job Market Dynamics
Alex Pokorny: Um, next one, number four, AI and everything will start a feeling of rebellion from those who feel left out of the benefits. So I think we're gonna have an anti AI spike.
I'm already starting to feel the beginnings of that in a work situation of individuals who feel like they've fallen behind the curve. And that's just because there's so much news and so many changes happening so rapidly, they feel like they're behind already. Right. And they're starting to, it's right now the humble ignorance of, I feel outta date.
I, I feel I should get, you know, I'm gonna try to set aside some time. The next feeling after that is anger of, I'm so far outta date, I don't know what I can do about it. You know, it's frustration. And we're starting to get that. And then we're gonna get all the way to. AI has taken jobs out of my industry, or at least says so in the news, and I'm angry at it in general.
I think we're gonna start seeing that more and more. I mean, we had more layoffs in the United States. 1.1 million people got laid off this year than we have in like, quite a few years. So there's a lot. That's worst
Dave Dougherty: since 2008, isn't it?
Alex Pokorny: 2009, something like that. Something like that. It's been a long time and it's, it's not helpful.
So, no, that runs to number five. Basically layoffs continue as the rise of ai, job search and auto apply. Agents become a standard part of LinkedIn because the loyalty from company to employee is gonna drop. Mm-hmm. So the loyalty to the company will drop. So people will be more apt to use AI tools to job search more frequently than ever before.
Number six, more AI generated work from coworkers. Claiming that they're replying too fast. Um, or questioning if remote employees and then eventually in-office employees are working multiple jobs at once. Mm-hmm. Um, I think there's gonna be some distrust of coworkers starting to come up because you're gonna be wondering, am I just talking to an AI system or am I through you and you're just becoming the bottleneck in this?
Or is this coworker actually adding anything or anything of value? And then, you know, once we start seeing a lot of AI workflows and agents and stuff like that, then the replies will get very quick, the slides will look very polished. It'll start to be a question of what that person is actually influencing and doing.
I think it'll be almost 100% done unfairly though. Mm-hmm. It'll be posed against people who are doing work. Maybe they're using tools or whatever, but people will deride them no matter what. Sorry, that's all pessimistic, but I dunno.
Dave Dougherty: Well, but it's related to your other one.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: I mean,
Alex Pokorny: loyalty and everything's gonna drop.
So what do you go, you're gonna do reactions. It's
Dave Dougherty: economics 1 0 1. What are the incentives?
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. And then if your job's not secure, work two jobs if you can. And then how you, what kind of tools and agents do need to do that.
Dave Dougherty: I remember talking to a, a German friend of ours and he once asked, you know, what's it, what's it like working in the US economy?
I said, you know, when you're on an airplane and they give you the safety presentation, put on your mask first, then you help others. And I hate that, but that's largely the feeling, and AI's only gonna make that worse, unfortunately. Yeah.
A really good
Ruthi Corcoran: line to think about. And I, I think your comments about what distrust and how it's gonna change or how it already is and will continue to change our interpersonal relations in the office and outside the office is huge. Right? Because as it extends into, not just in the office, but like if, if I know I've got, you know, a friend or a family member who uses AI all the time, is that text you?
Is that, you know, and that, that's hard. How do you Right. So the value of in-person goes up phenomenally.
Mm-hmm.
Which wasn't on my list, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna put that in there. I don't know how to quantify it. I, maybe I'll figure out a way of articulating the prediction, but
Dave Dougherty: I actually have it in my notes, but I didn't say it.
You can see the second paragraph first line is in-person events hit different. Yeah.
Ruthi Corcoran: Yeah.
Dave Dougherty: I know that's been a takeaway from my 2025 is I put a, a priority on networking and mentoring and in-person events and, uh, it took almost all year to start seeing the impacts of that. But man, am I, I'm totally bullish on that.
I even have some informational interviews with people coming up just because I'm like, let me learn more about what you're doing and how you're doing it. And Yeah. You know, that is, if anybody's worried about networking or anything, just if you think they're doing something cool, tell them that.
And that's good for at least a coffee talk, because who doesn't like to be validated?
Ruthi Corcoran: It's really good advice. Do that.
I'll close this out with my predictions, which are quite different than the predictions we've talked about so far. Um, and bit more long shots, I'd say. Bit more outside of my day-to-day realm.
The first one is, I think 2026 will be the year of chatbots and agents doing marketing activities. So I know we, um, we had chatbots in our episode 19. I think that those as you have different startups and SaaS tools, which all of a sudden make a chatbot easier on a website, et cetera, I think that'll be, become even more commonplace, um, than it is today, whether they're valuable and useful.
TBD, let's see. And then similarly, um, having agents doing more of the activity. I think there's enough of the technology evolved in the dots connected for LMS to not just sort of create content and then you go do something. I, I think we're gonna start seeing the shift of, okay, now it's not only writing the email, but sending it or whatever the equivalent it is.
And Dave, you had mentioned how, you know, we, you had tried a number of experiments to put sort of an agent situation together. I realize that's not even the right phrasing, but essentially to automate some of the activities that you're doing. Um, for the podcast, my guess is that we will get there this year.
We'll see how that goes.
The Future of AI Hardware and Business Models
Ruthi Corcoran: The next one is, I think we're gonna see the first widely adopted AI hardware this year. I don't know what form it'll take. Maybe it'll be a change in the phone. Maybe it'll be earbuds, maybe it'll be glass, whatever it is. But I think something's gonna come out this year.
Dave Dougherty: It would be interesting if Apple released uh, glasses because then you could do the test of trust in the companies.
'cause like, I have a lot more trust in Apple than I do meta.
Ruthi Corcoran: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Alex Pokorny: That'd be an interesting one.
Ruthi Corcoran: All right. And the last two, we won't know who the winner of the AI space is for a couple more years. I don't think it's gonna be this year. Maybe it's next year, but I don't think we're gonna know. Oh, it's Gemini, it's Claude, it's Chey pt. Maybe there's another one that comes out the woodwork and I don't think we're gonna know.
Dave Dougherty: I would say 2030.
Ruthi Corcoran: Okay. 2030.
Alex Pokorny: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I, I don't know if I'd go that far. There are some surprising little startups that have by benchmarks beaten some of the big companies out there. Like I'm talking about startups with like seven people, right? So I think there's gonna be some surprising changes, but I think the market's gonna fracture so bad that by 2030 it's gonna be pretty hard to say who won what?
Who won the enterprise space? Who won the small business space, who won the marketing space, the IT space, right? I think it's gonna fracture before, you know,
Ruthi Corcoran: last but not least, the AI killer business model will be figured out this year. A little context for that. Yeah. What the heck am I talking about? So I listen to this fabulous eight hour podcast about the history of Microsoft.
Good, good God. I
brought to you by the acquired podcast and they did a huge deep dive. Loved the format you have. It is a time commitment, if you're outside gardening or whatnot, it's a nice thing in the background,
Dave Dougherty: like how you're talking about gardening with a snow scape behind you. But yeah.
Okay. Continue. Can snowman, it's the same thing,
Ruthi Corcoran: right? There's a plant. So they talked about how, um, one of the things that Microsoft, like, they figured out the killer business model with software, which is you could put in a certain amount of r and d and then copy, and that turned out to be a way of, you know, uh, you, we've all heard like they were able to basically print money, right?
Because you're able to copy the thing, right? That turned out to be sort of the revolution with software in terms of business model. Was that sort of scaling? Then the internet comes around and Google figures out the sort of killer business model with search and specifically that you that it's advertising that yeah, you get people to use your search, then you can pay for ads and all of a sudden you get sort of scaling effects there.
Yeah.
Unclear, at least to me, maybe some other folks have figured it out and I'll just hear about it this year. And that's part of the prediction, what that equivalent business model is for LLMs, like subscriptions don't have that sort of exponential scaling.
There's likely something there which is going to allow one of the different LLMs once they figure it out to sort of really make money off of this thing.
And I think Google's in an interesting position in that. They currently have to pay or they're, they're wanting to have serve up ads. And I was listening to a podcast with Sam Altman where he's like, look, that's at odds with being able to trust quality responses from an LLM, right? Mm-hmm.
Because if your business model is based off of, of paid advertisement how is, how are you providing a trustworthy responses in your LLM? Like, those things are at odds together. So what is the way in which LLMs are really going to make money, um, in scale?
Alex Pokorny: I don't, yeah, there's gonna be an API, at least in the midterm growth.
'cause like the cloud-based side of Amazon and Microsoft is massive. Usually understated 'cause it's not very interesting, but it's a huge part of their business and it keeps growing. My, my last prediction was workflows and everything that basically AI gets added in via workflow. So if it's, it's not a custom API AI already built in, there'll be an API connected and then you'll be able to use a workflow to use it.
So no matter what, you'll be feeding, basically at some point using it to evaluate, to optimize the data, to transition it, to put it into a chart, to change the format, you name it. But then if you constantly are using these AI tools in between all your business processes, honestly, that's how like Zapier and a couple others make their money right now is the usage.
Mm-hmm. But if you have this workflow that literally every time someone visits, you know, your website, you add them to your, whatever, some sort of, you know, database or something like that, and you use Zapier to do it well, that Zap, as they call it, has cost. So literally every visit. Cost profit for Zapier.
I mean, they, they add a quick mm-hmm. That's one of the problems and complaints they have with that business model is that, and their competitors don't use that same model. They use slightly different models. So Ruthie, I think you're onto something there with what is that business model that allows that usage
Ruthi Corcoran: mm-hmm.
To
Alex Pokorny: create money versus, yeah. Access to create money. Oh, that's gonna be an interesting one. Yeah. Subscriptions are broken. I mean, I think we all kind of know that one. Like ads on mobile games and pay to win is frustrating. Like there's a lot of these points where it's like, it's not a part of the experience in a way where it benefits instead it's a part of the experience that detracts
Ruthi Corcoran: Yes.
Right. You
Alex Pokorny: know, like, oh, I wanna watch my random, you know, sport that I'm into, but now I need five different subscriptions.
Dave Dougherty: That's
Alex Pokorny: don't even gimme start on that with timber
Dave Dougherty: bowls. Man. Thank you. I'm so pissed off about that.
Ruthi Corcoran: And that's the thing, I think you phrased it really well, which is finding a way in which it's additive.
Like you're seeing the value and it's not detracting. You don't, at least
Alex Pokorny: neutral
Ruthi Corcoran: Yes. Like
Alex Pokorny: that. That's my pain with the recipe sites. Like honestly, if you'd put the recipes at the top, I'd be happy with, and you put ads below, I don't care. That's fine. Load 'em in. But once you start detracting from that experience, or I constantly scrolling and closing and looking for tiny Xs, I'm pretty frustrated.
Mm-hmm. I mean, I, you lost the benefit of me visiting the page to the point where I typically hit the back button. I, I use a privacy browser then to reopen the same thing with all the ads stripped out. It doesn't help.
Ruthi Corcoran: Yeah.
Alex Pokorny: Yeah. I'm still ranting about recipe sites. Yeah. Thanks.
Dave Dougherty: Well, it, it's important to develop as a human being first, to acknowledge your biases.
So I'm glad we've reached this step with you, Alex, today. Yeah. Uh, as we can, I,
Alex Pokorny: my prediction is by the end of 2026, I'll still be complaining horror SME sites. That one will probably be true. Oh, and by the way, can I recommend a book given the old news? Yeah. The Old Ways.
Alex Pokorny: Also by during this podcast, I built a GPT, so there is now A GBT and Jet GBTs, uh, catalog, the Enterprising Minds podcast, where you get replies from the three of us based upon our transcripts.
Have fun messing around with that
Ruthi Corcoran: amazing prediction. Complete.
Dave Dougherty: Yeah. See,
Alex Pokorny: you just make it true.
Dave Dougherty: That's how credibility works.
Anyway, this episode was a lot of fun for me. Hopefully that comes across in the audio. Thank you everybody for listening. We greatly appreciate, uh, everybody who's like subscribed, shared, commented, come up to us in real life and, and commented on things. It's greatly appreciated and, uh, this is the last episode of 2025. Have a wonderful holiday season. Uh, have a great new year. We will be back on January 13th for a new year of teasing this stuff out. Have a great end of year. Have a great holiday with your families and.
