The end of OpenAI, and other 2026 predictions

December 14, 2025

58 min episode · 2 min read

Nilay Patel,Joanna Stern

Episode

58 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Artificial Intelligence

AI-Generated Summary

Published Dec 22, 2025

Key Takeaways

✓Apple foldable device: Apple releases a foldable phone priced between $1,799-$1,999 in 2026, positioned as an early adopter product rather than mainstream hit, with media backlash focused on pricing despite limited production volumes similar to Vision Pro strategy.
✓Waymo safety incident: Autonomous vehicle services face a critical moment when a serious accident or fatality occurs due to expanded fleet deployment across multiple cities, triggering intense public debate between safety advocates citing superior statistical data and critics demanding regulatory intervention.
✓OpenAI viability crisis: OpenAI faces potential collapse due to lack of coherent product strategy, inability to scale large language models toward AGI as promised, executive turnover, and unsustainable economics where each query costs money while user engagement declines with guardrail implementations.
✓AI content filtering: Social platforms implement mandatory labeling and filtering systems for AI-generated content as creator backlash and audience fatigue intensify, with platforms detecting metadata to allow users to opt out of algorithmically-generated slop flooding feeds.

What It Covers

The Vergecast hosts make predictions for 2026 across tech industry developments, evaluating their failed 2025 forecasts while offering mild, medium, and spicy takes on Apple, OpenAI, autonomous vehicles, and AI platform evolution.

Key Questions Answered

•Apple foldable device: Apple releases a foldable phone priced between $1,799-$1,999 in 2026, positioned as an early adopter product rather than mainstream hit, with media backlash focused on pricing despite limited production volumes similar to Vision Pro strategy.
•Waymo safety incident: Autonomous vehicle services face a critical moment when a serious accident or fatality occurs due to expanded fleet deployment across multiple cities, triggering intense public debate between safety advocates citing superior statistical data and critics demanding regulatory intervention.
•OpenAI viability crisis: OpenAI faces potential collapse due to lack of coherent product strategy, inability to scale large language models toward AGI as promised, executive turnover, and unsustainable economics where each query costs money while user engagement declines with guardrail implementations.
•AI content filtering: Social platforms implement mandatory labeling and filtering systems for AI-generated content as creator backlash and audience fatigue intensify, with platforms detecting metadata to allow users to opt out of algorithmically-generated slop flooding feeds.

Notable Moment

The panel reveals that nobody, including Microsoft and OpenAI executives, has identified who will serve on the expert panel tasked with declaring when artificial general intelligence is achieved, despite this being a contractual requirement with significant financial implications.

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