6 months ago I posted on LinkedIn about 13 things that I believed would come true in the world of AI before the end of 2026.
I'm going to summarize my top 7 below, add a few additional thoughts now that I've had 6 months to think about it, and see which of them (if any) came true.
1) "Second brain as a service" becomes a billion-dollar vertical.
It's hard to say whether or not this is technically true (yet) because I don't think we've seen a company purely focused on knowledge bases hit unicorn status.
That said, the concept of building a second brain and a personal/business knowledge base has exploded in popularity since I wrote this which I believe has added much more than a billion dollars in enterprise value to the popular tools used to build these brains (GitHub, Obsidian, Notion, etc.)
2) Owned audiences (email, SMS, mailing addresses, SEO rankings) become 100x more valuable as AI spam floods every channel.
This was already true at the time of writing and has become even more true in the 6 months since.
My friend Matthew Brown summarized this point nicely in his recent LinkedIn post specifically as it relates to SEO/GEO.
- More than 50% of all articles are now written by AI.
- 86% of the articles ranking on Google were written by humans
- 82% of the articles ChatGPT and Perplexity cite were written by humans
3) Building an audience and converting it to channels you own is the single most valuable skill of 2026.
This is why I spend well over 50% of my time on content creation. The vast majority of our leads (for consulting, community, sponsorships, etc.) come inbound via content.
My email list makes me six figures in profit every year. If you can get good at generating attention on one social channel, turn that attention to email subscribers, then market to that list, it's hard to be poor.
4) AI content hits an 8/10 quality floor with basic input.
The best examples of this are Seedance 2.5 (for video), Claude Opus 5.5 (for writing), and Dessa (for voice).
A basic prompt is all it takes to get an output that most people would rank 8 out of 10 on a quality scale. But getting to a 10 out of 10 is what still requires taste, context, references, and understanding what "good" looks like.
When 8 out of 10 becomes the floor, the only way to win is to consistently get to a 10 out of 10.
5) Relationships with people who own large audiences become the fastest growth lever on earth.
I still believe this to an extent but the more I learn about paid ads and cold outreach the more I'm realizing that you have to choose the growth lever that aligns with your skillset.
For example, a friend of mine runs a real estate coaching program. He "borrowed" his friend's audience by running a 45 minute workshop inside his community then pitching his paid offer at the end.
That 45-minute workshop generated over $100,000 in profit for his business.
If speaking in front of groups isn't your strength, then learn paid ads. It's not unheard of to put a dollar in and get 4 dollars out (or better) when you get good. It comes down to understanding your strengths then choosing a lever that aligns with them.
6) Every serious company hires an "AI trends" role.
While I'm not seeing companies hiring for an "AI trends" role specifically, I've noticed an explosion in hiring for roles like Chief AI Officer, Forward Deployed Engineer, etc.
These roles are designed to accelerate AI adoption within the company and ultimately leverage AI to make money, save time, and increase product/service quality.
I think paying attention to AI trends and taking action on the important ones are baked into the job descriptions for the roles I mentioned above.
7) Proprietary data is the only real moat left
I'm changing my tune on this one a bit. While data is absolutely ONE moat, it's not the ONLY moat.
I think data and media will be the 2 big ones. We've seen niche datasets explode in value with companies like Mercor and Micro1 seemingly coming out of nowhere and paying huge premiums to license proprietary data from companies.
OpenAI paid tens of millions of dollars earlier this year to acquire tech podcast TBPN. Other podcasts like Acquired command six figures for a 60-second ad slot due to the value of their audience.
Pretty soon, if you don't have a) actionable, private data or b) a media outlet or audience of some sort, it's going to be hard to compete.
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I'd recommend reading my full LinkedIn post from 6 months ago to see the other 6 predictions.
I'll probably do a post in January on my AI predictions for 2027. I think 2027 will be a pivotal year for AI, media, business, and the world in general. Fun times ahead.
I hope you enjoyed this newsletter and if you did feel free to reply "yes" to let me know.
Be back next week.
- Corey
A few notes/tweets/cool things sourced from the AI community.
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Some solid ways to make money as an AI consultant.
2)
I found this post useful as we start to get deeper into cold email.
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9:10 PM • Nov 8, 2026
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I feel like this story is straight out of a movie.
Thanks for reading the Corey's Notes newsletter. I'd appreciate it if you sent it to a friend that might find it interesting.
Be sure to check out the Build With AI podcast on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. If you're a non-technical entrepreneur who wants to learn how to integrate AI into your business, you'll love it.
-Corey
