Digital Transformation in 2025–2026: Trends

What to expect as AI matures, organizations recalibrate, and regulators step into the spotlight.

1/ AI everything

As AI proves it can live in objects that carry a processor or can access online servers, we will see more and more AI applications entering the physical world, slowly. Though many other technologies must come of age concurrently, still, AI embedded in drones, cars or other objects can enter our streets soon. We can coexist with AI enhanced objects, see them as cohabitants, collaborators, or we can restrict them, acting as oppressors. Most importantly, we will have to choose our stand and set boundaries with these newcoming machines, as intelligence can now be put in all the inanimate. But which objects are worth the upgrade and our resources for it?

AI moves from software into physical objects, entering everyday life. Illustration concept by Costas Bissas, Illustration by Giannis Mazarakis, FWD Greece: Innovation Pulse 2025–2026

2/ Human Care: a universal way to add value in an AI world

From writing a CV, lawsuit or essay, to initially judging CVs, reviewing rulings and essays, AI is being used by humans in all sectors of today’s society and business processes. Thus, bots are talking to bots, curating the content reaching humans. An intermediator in our communication, AI is given power to subvert the essence of this connection between humans. Do humans actually care for the content of this interaction, is it of true value or is it deemed unnecessary? If AI becomes more and more available, cheap and accessible, winning points will not be given to those who evidently and mindlessly used the technology, but to those who cared about the result, thought it through before interacting with the technology, added a human element, their sensemaking skills and a craftsman’s “eye” to the work. After all, research indicates that using AI after “brain-only” work produces much richer results.

Knowledge flows between people. AI mediates. Illustration concept by Costas Bissas, Illustration by Giannis Mazarakis, FWD Greece: Innovation Pulse 2025–2026

3/ Minding entry employees to safeguard future midlevel and senior expertise.

Younger employees currently entering the job market are reportedly most volatile by AI, while AI, to become better, requires context that is difficult to access in the form of pure data. Given that all organizations will require mid and senior level expertise in order to act with experience and strategize with insight, they will have to understand ways with which the new entry employees will gain firsthand interaction with their field and not just go down AI generated prompt loopholes. Permitting tacit knowledge development of early employees will be paramount for future viability of the organization, and though not evident in terms of work output, entry level employees, via their tasks and time spent pondering the content of their work, grasp aspects, details and nuances of work, building their expertise. Would you trust an inexperienced and non-seasoned individual to be the successor CEO of your organization?

AI affects entry-level roles first. What we do next will shape future leadership. Illustration concept by Costas Bissas, Illustration by Giannis Mazarakis, FWD Greece: Innovation Pulse 2025–2026

4 / AI tiers

Weighing the energy and token consumption required to perform AI operations and the level of developed AΙ needed to perform a given task, AΙ service offering may be compartmentalized, in order to offer product tiers. In the background, instead of one machine doing all, the appropriate machine can be assigned to the task of relevant difficulty, releasing resources on-demand and in-appropriacy. Rather than giving everyone the latest and possibly most energy consuming version of LLMs, we would have to put effort in thinking how to compartmentalize the required consumption to AI version ratio.

Different tasks require different levels of AI, and different levels of energy. Illustration concept by Costas Bissas, Illustration by Giannis Mazarakiss, FWD Greece: Innovation Pulse 2025–2026

5 / Human AI-slop fixers

LLMs are tools to bring relevant pieces of vast information forward, faster. However, humans are still called in to clear up when LLMs mess up, and they end up being the trustworthy babysitters, the last step for any search or piece of code that needs a seasoned eye before deployment. With AI still not having proven its business worth, an organization ought to think twice before replacing all employees with AI agents.

As AI scales, human oversight becomes the last and most critical layer. Illustration concept by Costas Bissas, Illustration by Giannis Mazarakis, FWD Greece: Innovation Pulse 2025–2026

6 / The future is in the hand of regulators

As humans are drawn in AI by its anthropomorphizing responses, they mistake the machine’s synthetic words for human spoken words which are unconsciously backed by empathy, context reading, innuendos and subliminal understandings. Recently, this mistake has led humans to make decisions solely based on AI responses, sometimes leading to devastating results. Regulations to strengthen safeguards will gain more importance and will become a negotiation field for the actual product.

The future of AI will be shaped as much by regulation as by technology. Illustration concept by Costas Bissas, Illustration by Giannis Mazarakis, FWD Greece: Innovation Pulse 2025–2026

To dive deeper into the innovation ecosystem, download the FWD Greece: Innovation Pulse 2025–2026 report by Found.ation, in collaboration with 28DIGITAL and HDBI **here.**

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