Email: 3 AI problems that actually matter in 2026

Subject:
3 AI problems that actually matter in 2026
Received:
11/3/2025, 7:15:36 PM
From:
"Matt Pocock (AI Hero)" <matt@aihero.dev>
To:
porch.hat.81@rss.andrealin.it
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&lt;table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse:separate;mso-table-lspace:0pt;mso-table-rspace:0pt;width:100%;margin:0 auto"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="vertical-align:top"&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;It’s that time of year. I’m taking stock of the last 18 months since I started my AI journey properly (and since I turned 35! Yeesh).&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;And I’ve realized something: a lot of AI integrations are garbage. Not because the tech is bad. Because we’re solving the wrong problems.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Most of the integrations I’ve played with have been pretty shallow. Chatbots. Talk-to-your-PDF. The kind of stuff that makes for impressive demos but doesn’t really pay off when you’re using it day-to-day.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;To me, the future isn’t building (or using) generic tools. It’s building and using &lt;em&gt;bespoke&lt;/em&gt; applications that deeply integrate with your specific needs and projects. Truly &lt;strong&gt;personal&lt;/strong&gt; software. Stuff that actually knows who you are, what you like, and what you’re trying to do at any given moment.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;That’s the future, but I think there are three critical problems we need to solve to get there and that’s where I’m putting my focus in 2026.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 class="" style="font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1em;margin:0;font-size:1.17em;margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#000000;line-height:1.5"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Human-in-the-Loop&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;How do you balance giving the LLM enough power to be useful without letting it run wild and do something weird?&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Give the AI too much power, and it’ll surprise you (not always in a good way). Take away too much power, and you’re back to clicking buttons manually like it’s 2023.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;As with most things, the best answer won’t be at either extreme but somewhere in the middle. But the UX is still so wild west that this is SO far from solved.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;2026 will be a super interesting year for AI UX, and the ways we keep a human in the loop will be a big part of that.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 class="" style="font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1em;margin:0;font-size:1.17em;margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#000000;line-height:1.5"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Memory&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Imagine working with an AI agent that actually remembers your stack, your preferences, your projects. You wouldn’t waste time re-explaining context every damn time or crafting the “perfect” prompt.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Like Human-in-the-Loop, memory is mostly unsolved. The experiments are all over the place. Sure, some are promising, but most are creepy or insecure as hell. I’m betting on project-scoped memory. Think chat threads, but they actually know what you’re working on.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 class="" style="font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1em;margin:0;font-size:1.17em;margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#000000;line-height:1.5"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Retrieval&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;RAG has been around forever, and new ideas pop up all the time to improve or challenge it. But RAG is not going anywhere anytime soon.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Sure, context windows are getting bigger, but the amount of &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; context an LLM can actually work with is still stuck around 200,000 tokens at a time. So retrieval is really less about accessing data, and more about preparing and managing what goes into that context window.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Since this unlocks so many things, I’m personally investing &lt;strong&gt;hard&lt;/strong&gt; in my retrieval skills. I’m building up my own reliable datasets that I can use in my workflows.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Data is still the foundation everything sits on top of.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h3 class="" style="font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;font-size:1em;margin:0;font-size:1.17em;margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#000000;line-height:1.5"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are you focusing on?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Those are just a few of the topics I’m &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; excited about right now, and the stuff I’m diving deepest into. These are the problems that matter for building with these tools.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for more interviews, more talks, and a new course cohort and resources to help you learn and apply them to your own projects.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;If you’re working on any of these problems, especially if you’re doing something weird with memory or retrieval, hit reply.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;I want to know what’s actually working.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Cheers,&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class="" style="margin:1em 0;font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,Oxygen-Sans,Ubuntu,Cantarell,'Helvetica Neue',sans-serif;color:#2d2d2f;font-size:16px;line-height:1.5"&gt;Matt&lt;/p&gt;
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