Global Deepfake Deception, Mental Offloading, and Snap Specs’ Spiritual Successor: Our Predictions for 2026 with Felina Tan, Matt Webster and Jag Sharma - E105
Prediction season is back for a round 2, and this time Matt and Felina are swinging for the fences.
Between the dream of burdening AI with our mental load, to the nightmare of deepfakes fooling us all on the world stage, our outlook on 2026 proves one thing - you won’t have time to catch your breath, or the year in tech will pass you by…
Join us in the second of our special prediction episodes; we’ll see in December whether it’s the optimistic theories that prevail, or whether you’ll be able to trust anything in the AI era anymore.
This episode of Disconnected covers:
A New Age of AI-Driven Consumer Tech
Social Platforms Fighting For Our Attention
Trust, Deepfakes & The Media
Robots, Safety & Regulation
AI in High-Stakes Industries
Episode Highlights:
"2026 is the year we stop seeing smart glasses as a niche tech and start seeing them on commuters, cyclists and in cafes everywhere." - 1:15 - Jag Sharma
"All meta messages will be centralised or in one place - Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and Threads will finally feel like one system." - 10:00 - Felina Tan
"I think in 2026 we'll see the first step towards a home robot causing serious physical harm to a human inside their private home." - 17:15 - Matt Webster
"One of the big global pharma giants will acquire a protein AI startup outright… to own the future, you need to own the AI engine." - 27:10 - Jag Sharma
"By December 2026 there’ll be a very high‑quality deepfake of a G7 political leader broadcast as if it were real by a major TV news outlet." - 38:45 - Matt Webster
"By December 2026, Google’s global search market share is going to fall below 80%… this is the beginning of the erosion of one of tech’s mega dogs." - 47:15 - Matt Webster
Links & references:
Felina Tan
https://www.linkedin.com/in/felinagabrielletan/
Matt Webster:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattwwebster/
Jag Sharma: