Microsoft outlines 7 AI trends for 2026, from digital colleagues to quantum

Summary

A report from Korea’s Hankyung summarises Microsoft’s vision for seven AI trends that will define 2026, including "digital colleague" AIs that collaborate with humans rather than just answer questions. Microsoft executives predict AI will become a true partner in fields like scientific research—helping form hypotheses and control experiments—and software development, where repository-level "code intelligence" can understand relationships across large codebases. In healthcare, MS touts tools like its AI diagnostic orchestrator, claiming an 85.5% accuracy rate on complex medical cases versus 20% for average human physicians, and notes that Copilot and Bing already handle over 50 million health queries daily. The piece also highlights a shift toward more efficient AI infrastructure, comparing future AI control systems to an "air traffic control" layer that minimises wasted compute, and points to hybrid quantum–AI–supercomputing architectures on the horizon. Overall, the article captures a mood in which AI is expected to quietly pervade professional workflows, even as debates over hype and bubbles continue in financial markets.