a16z predicts AI trends for 2026: AI agents securely participate in finance and trading activities, and undertake more substantive research tasks

On January 12, 2024, a16z crypto published an article titled “Artificial Intelligence in 2026: Three Major Trends,” which mentions: By 2026, AI will be used to handle more substantive research tasks. AI will evolve from simple question-and-answer interactions to genuinely assist high-level research: understanding complex instructions like guiding PhD students, proposing novel hypotheses, and even independently solving extremely difficult mathematical problems (such as Putnam). The research style will shift towards a “scholar” model, leveraging AI’s “hallucinations” to stimulate creativity, and producing high-quality results through multi-layered “agent wrapping” workflows. The focus will move from “Know Your Customer” (KYC) to “Know Your Agent” (KYA). The biggest bottleneck in the agent economy is no longer intelligence but identity and trust. The number of non-human agents has far surpassed humans, yet they remain “ghosts without bank accounts.” Rapidly establishing KYA (Know Your Agent) infrastructure is essential: binding agents to their entities, permissions, and responsibilities through cryptographic signatures, enabling AI agents to securely participate in finance, trading, and other activities. Addressing the “invisible tax” on open networks. AI agents extract information from open websites on a large scale but bypass traditional revenue sources like advertising and subscriptions, causing a persistent “invisible tax” on content creators and the open web, threatening the sustainability of the internet ecosystem. Existing AI licensing agreements are only temporary patches and are financially unsustainable. Future solutions require new techno-economic models that utilize blockchain to enable real-time, usage-based nano-payments and complex attribution, ensuring that value automatically and fairly flows to the entities contributing information.