Frontier AI in 2026, what actually changed and what did not (opens in new tab)

A year ago the question that animated the field was whether the scaling curve would keep delivering. Today the question is what to build on top of capabilities that were science fiction in 2023. This note is a personal accounting of what changed at the frontier through the first half of 2026, written from the perspective of someone who has been shipping AI-driven systems into a production research stack. The summary up front: capability went up roughly as expected. The shape of the curve is w...