The Inktelligence - January 6, 2026

In partnership with

The Reasoning Revolution

Here’s what most people missed in 2025:

The chatbot era quietly ended.

We’re no longer just prompting tools to help us write, summarize, or brainstorm. We’re now delegating entire workflows to systems that can reason, plan, and execute on their own.

The real question is no longer:
“Can AI help me write this email?”

It’s:
“Should I be the one writing emails at all?”

That shift fundamentally changes how we should think about AI adoption in 2026.

Back in October, I introduced three archetypes: Producers, Resisters, and Cultivators. At the time, it was a helpful lens. This year, it became unavoidable.

Let’s look at what changed and what it means for how work actually gets done.

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The AI landscape: January 2026

When “better” actually means different

What’s changed in the AI landscape isn’t raw intelligence.
It’s that the major platforms have stopped pretending there’s one kind of intelligence.

Across the leading systems, the shift is the same: different tasks require different kinds of thinking.

Some work benefits from depth and careful reasoning.
Some demands speed and responsiveness.
Some breaks unless the system can hold massive amounts of context without losing coherence.
And some fails catastrophically if correctness isn’t prioritized over fluency.

That distinction didn’t matter much in the chatbot era. It matters a lot now.

As AI systems move from assistance into execution, using the wrong thinking style becomes an operational risk, not a minor inefficiency.

Here’s the operator takeaway:

• Exploratory work rewards speed and breadth.

• High-stakes work demands rigor and correctness.

• Cross-functional or longitudinal work depends on context retention.

• Executing workflows requires disciplined reasoning, not clever language.

The mistake many teams are making is looking for “the best model” as a universal answer.

That’s like insisting every decision in your company should be made:

• in the same meeting

• by the same people

• with the same level of rigor

It doesn’t work.

This is where the archetypes diverge:

• Producers will try to master every model and feature.

• Cultivators will focus on matching the thinking style to the decision at hand.

In 2026, that distinction will matter far more than knowing which model tops a benchmark.

AI Operator Cheatsheet

The real shift: from tools to teammates

This is where 2026 gets interesting.

Genspark: a digital headquarters

Genspark behaves less like a single tool and more like a standing team.

• Sparkpages turn research prompts into finished, interactive pages

• Super Agents can place phone calls or handle basic service interactions

• The 2026 offering bundles access to GPT-5.2, Claude 4.5, and Gemini 3 Pro

Work no longer needs to happen synchronously or under your direct supervision.

Manus: the autonomous executor*

Manus represents a different category entirely.

• It runs inside a Linux sandbox

• It can install software, run scripts, and browse the web

• Tasks run asynchronously in the cloud

You assign work and return later.

This is delegation in the literal sense, not assistance.

The tradeoff is real: you need enough technical literacy to judge whether the output is correct, incomplete, or dangerously wrong.

*I covered Meta’s acquisition of Manus in the last issue.

What this means for the three archetypes

If you’re a Producer

You’re likely energized by this shift.

But here’s the uncomfortable question:
Are you using these systems to pack more into your schedule, or to create space for deeper thinking?

Speed without direction just makes you efficient at the wrong things.

If you’re a Resister

The gap is widening faster than it looks.

The good news is you don’t need to master everything. Pick one system and use it consistently for real curiosity, not optics.

Avoid productivity theater. Build confidence instead.

If you’re a Cultivator

This is your moment.

While others race to automate everything, you’re asking a different question:
What becomes more valuable when routine work disappears?

Judgment. Synthesis. The ability to frame problems before solving them.

The strategic question nobody’s asking

We’re building systems that can reason through complex problems, write software, and execute workflows autonomously.

Yet we still measure success in tasks completed per hour.

That metric made sense in the chatbot era. It makes no sense now.

The individuals and companies who win in 2026 won’t be the ones who automate the most. They’ll be the ones who use automation to buy time for thinking that can’t be automated.

Bell Labs didn’t measure success in daily output. They measured it by whether people were asking interesting questions.

That principle matters again.

Your move

The reasoning revolution isn’t coming. It’s already here.

The choice isn’t whether to adopt these systems.
It’s whether you’ll use them to become:

• More replaceable by doing more of the same, faster

• More valuable by developing judgment that compounds over time

Choose your archetype carefully.

Because in 2026, you’re not just choosing how you work.
You’re choosing what kind of value you create.

I’d like to hear from you!

If you would like provide me with any feedback, suggestions, thoughts, discoveries, or just say hello, please write to me (I promise that I will read every single email): [email protected]

Till next time,

Hock