The doable future: making AI's biggest promises a reality in 2026 | Episode 208

The doable future: making AI's biggest promises a reality in 2026 | Episode 208

From Cloud and Clear by SADA, An Insight Company

December 2, 2025 · 28 min · Episode 208

About this episode

Miles Ward and Simon Margolis discuss impactful predictions for AI in 2026, emphasizing the shift from R&D to profitability in AI investments.

Join SADA's CTO, Miles Ward, and Associate CTO of AI & ML, Simon Margolis, for this special and final episode of the Cloud and Clear podcast. They share their biggest, most impactful predictions for 2026 and beyond, focusing on the massive shift required for businesses to get value from AI. Miles and Simon discuss how the conversation around AI investment is changing. Boards will no longer tolerate putting AI in the R&D bucket. The focus is shifting from "what's possible" to "what's profitable," demanding financial returns on a quarterly basis. In this insightful discussion, you will learn: The model choice: Why optimizing your model selection matters, noting that a model like Gemini Pro 2.5 can have output tokens that are 25 times more expensive than Gemini Flash. Service as software: The need to think of your business as a new startup, building "machinery to let you run service as if it's software." Democratization: How "anybody that knows their natural language is able to go and build some type of truly agentic system." The ability to build a prototype with a prompt is replacing lengthy Product Requirement Documents (PRDs). The luxury trap: Why reducing friction will…

People in this episode

Guest: Simon Margolis

Topics covered

  • AI
  • business
  • technology
  • predictions

Keywords

  • AI investment
  • model selection
  • service as software
  • democratization
  • user interfaces

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Gemini Pro 2.5, Gemini Flash, InsightON

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