By Susanna Ray Microsoft

AI is entering a new phase, one defined by real-world impact.

After several years of experimentation, 2026 is shaping up to be the year AI evolves from instrument to partner, transforming how we work, create and solve problems. Across industries, AI is moving beyond answering questions to collaborating with people and amplifying their expertise.

This transformation is visible everywhere. In medicine, AI is helping close gaps in care. In software development, it's learning not just code but the context behind it. In scientific research, it's becoming a true lab assistant. In quantum computing, new hybrid approaches are heralding breakthroughs once thought impossible.

As AI agents become digital colleagues and take on specific tasks at human direction, organisations are strengthening security to keep pace with new risks. The infrastructure powering these advances is also maturing, with smarter, more efficient systems.

These seven trends to watch in 2026 show what's possible when people join forces with AI.

AI will amplify what people can achieve together

Aparna Chennapragada, Microsoft's chief product officer for AI experiences, sees 2026 as a new era for alliances between technology and people. If recent years were about AI answering questions and reasoning through problems, the next wave will be about true collaboration, Chennapragada says.

"The future isn't about replacing humans," she says. "It's about amplifying them."

AI agents are set to become digital coworkers, she says, helping individuals and small teams punch above their weight. Chennapragada envisions a workplace where a three-person team can launch a global campaign in days, with AI handling data crunching, content generation and personalisation while humans steer strategy and creativity. She predicts organisations that design for people to learn and work with AI "will get the best of both worlds," helping teams tackle bigger creative challenges and deliver results faster.

Her advice for professionals: don't compete with AI, but focus on learning how to work alongside it. The coming year, she says, "belongs to those who elevate the human role, not eliminate it."

AI agents will get new safeguards as they join the workforce

AI agents will proliferate in 2026 and play a bigger role in daily work, acting more like teammates than tools, says Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president of Microsoft Security. As organisations rely on these agents to help with tasks and decision-making, building trust in them will be essential, Jakkal says - starting with security.

"Every agent should have similar security protections as humans," she says, "to ensure agents don't turn into 'double agents' carrying unchecked risk."

That means giving each agent a clear identity, limiting what information and systems it can access, managing the data it creates and protecting it from attackers and threats, Jakkal says. Security will become ambient, autonomous and built-in, she says, not something added on later. In addition, as attackers use AI in new ways, defenders will use security agents to spot those threats and respond faster, she says.

"Trust is the currency of innovation," Jakkal says, making these shifts vital to helping organisations keep up with new risks as AI continues to become more central to how work gets done.

AI is poised to shrink the world's health gap

AI in healthcare is marking a turning point, says Dominic King, vice president of health at Microsoft AI.

"We'll see evidence of AI moving beyond expertise in diagnostics and extending into areas like symptom triage and treatment planning," King says. "Importantly, progress will start to move from research settings into the real world, with new generative AI products and services available to millions of consumers and patients."

That shift matters because access to care is a global crisis. The World Health Organisation projects a shortage of 11 million health workers by 2030 - a gap that leaves 4.5 billi...