Can ChatGPT really help you change your life - or just flatter you? Can ChatGPT really help you change your life - or just flatter you? AI as a life coach: experts share what works, what doesn't and what to look out for It's becoming more common for people to use AI chatbots for personal guidance - but this doesn't come without risks Setting goals is hard; keeping them is harder - and failure can bring about icky feelings about yourself. This year, in an effort to game the system and tilt the scales toward success, some people used AI for their 2026 resolutions. It's the latest step in an ongoing trend: in September 2025, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released findings showing that using the AI chatbot for personal guidance is very common.

Chatbots have become a common solution to enhance customer online experiences and will continue to be a popular tactic in 2022. Chatbots are especially valuable for routine questions that can save customer care reps time and cost per call, while also useful to quickly solve simple customer questions, such as finding a nearby retail address, or hours of operation. As questions get more complex, chatbots can become a source of customer dissatisfaction if not done right. The solution must provide a "low level of effort" and be easy to reach a human being (unlike when calling a company 800# and getting lost in an IVR system). It's no secret that people's patience is dwindling, so the companies that use technology to enhance and solve their needs fast will win in a competitive marketplace. That means that companies must lean on CX-skilled leaders to ensure best practices are applied, such as communication continuity.

In the latest episode of our podcast, Machine Learning that Works, I had a great pleasure to talk to Gabriel Preda, a Lead Data Scientist at Endava and a Kaggle Grandmaster. For those of you who want to see the full interview, here is the video version. If, on the other hand, you prefer to read, I prepared a summary as well. It's not a faithful transcript of our conversation, but a structured and rephrased version of the interview, that includes the key points and observations. Without further ado, let's meet Gabriel Preda! I work for Endava, which is a software service company, and our projects are actually our clients' projects.

First, AI will continue to help students personalize their learning experience and ultimately, see better academic outcomes. Software like Office365 is already using AI to help improve students' learning experience, but we're only at the beginning of what's possible. Today, tools like the editor in Microsoft Word use AI to scan students' papers and make suggestions for more inclusive language and redundant words. PowerPoint is also now using an AI-powered tool called Presentation Coach that records a student as he or she presenting slides and offers a dashboard with feedback on things like word choice, pacing and filler words. These types of naturally integrated AI tools will offer students more control over their learning experience, which boosts their confidence and overall love of learning.

The #1 benefit AI brings to transportation is increasing public safety. AI can predict trends and events before they happen. As it relates to tollways, AI allows vehicles to enter and exit without the need to stop. Tollways take pictures of oncoming vehicles and leverage AI-based software engines to identify license plate numbers and bill the respective registered owner. Motorists are safer and no longer need to fuss over paying for a toll.

The cloud has made our lives infinitely easier by storing our information remotely, but it's not been all peaches and cream. The cloud clears space on our devices while handling massive stores of information at a reasonable cost to the customer, but it's not an impenetrable safe for our data. Massive leaks of, um, sensitive photographs have been the most attention-catching scandals of the late 2010s, and they were made possible -- at least in part -- by flaws in cloud storage. But how has cloud computing evolved since the notorious iCloud photo leaks of 2014? Has security improved, or is the cloud still as vulnerable as our worst fears make it out to be?

We're certainly not going to run out of potential applications for artificial intelligence in the legal field any time soon, particularly as developments in AI enable us to apply it to more sophisticated aspects of lawyers' work.It's not just new entrants that are responding to demand from innovators in the legal field. Current, well-known providers of legal tech are also venturing into AI-powered products, either through acquisition or developing their own tools. This is a sign that the industry is changing and companies that have traditionally provided services to lawyers are moving to meet this new demand.

The number of moving parts in even the most basic of supply chains means that supply chain managers can use all the help they can get. AI is an emergent tool that could be of great use to supply chain managers. So where is AI as a tool for supply chain management, and which trends are most shaping AI's role within the industry? These industry insiders shared their answers to these questions. "A big tend will be orchestration systems that ensure humans, robots, and AI are working together to maximize their inherent strengths. A lot of companies incorporate robots into a single process step within their organization. This limits the machines potential to interact with other parts of the operation (and more importantly learn from those interactions), underutilizes the capabilities of other resources, and limits the operations ability to mix and match process steps based when needs change. It essentially creates a silo effect which decreases efficiency and productivity – the exact opposite of what AI is brought in to do." "We're particularly excited about how robots are getting better and better. They do a lot of heavy lifting in warehouses; not intelligent enough to take the jobs of human workers, but at least make human jobs better and easier than before."

The future of AI in retail, in a few words, is the ability to automate and optimize at scale in order to drive more sales both online and offline, using big data. This future means identifying and communicating better with consumers, and freeing people within the organization to focus on specific roles and actions for which the organization needs humans to fulfill. AI will change all interaction with consumers, from prospecting the right potential consumers to delivering the most relevant messages, all the way to purchases and building loyalty with consumers, while executing and optimizing the logistic process for the best and most effective service. It'll be embedded in every touch point of the journey, whether through voice, touch or behind the scenes. The goal of a relevant, seamless, and a memorable shopping experience at large scale can only be achieved with AI integrated.

What other trends are shaping the future of energy extraction, refinement, and consumption. These industry insiders provided their takes on the #1 trend shaping energy this year, and into the future. "Some areas where we see nascent AI is in predictive maintenance and asset monitoring. There are a few who are beginning to look at utilizing AI to analyze images from drones for surveillance and also for acoustic listening." "Advances in the'time-series' AI world (as opposed to AI for images or audio) are shaping the energy industry today. These include techniques for time series forecasting, anomaly detection, optimization etc. Specifically, probabilistic techniques and algorithms are showing significant improvements and becoming the driver of the next wave of optimization and value creation. These techniques augment today's unilateral AI predictions with additional information about the confidence in these predictions. This is not unlike the trend shaping the peer to peer transportation industry."