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Skynet has been postponed

Reality remains frustratingly far from AI companies’ doom-laden predictions.

Venture onto any tech blog in 2026 and you will quickly find those ringing the death knell of humanity, especially if they happen to be written by the CEO of an AI company (Dario Amodei is CEO of Anthropic).

The doomerism theory goes that AI will crush us all under an iron foot, starting with office-based workers - whose salaries will shrink shortly before their jobs vanish entirely. Odd thing for an AI CEO to say, but I guess it keeps the tech in the news.

To an extent, the doomers have a point. Technologists like Matt Shumer (an investor and also an AI CEO) and Siddant Khare (a software engineer at AI company Ona) have said their roles as developers have shifted from writing code (inventive, energising, creative) to reviewing AI outputs (dull, draining, repetitive).

Yes, AI fatigue is real. Yes, jobs are changing. But our research shows the salary part is not (yet) playing out. In fact, IT salaries are going through a renaissance after two years of suppressed growth.

This week we examined C-level and operational salaries in the UK, USA and Germany (we’ll publish a direct comparison next week), and found a return to growth levels not seen since 2023.

The obvious assumption is that demand for AI skills is driving salaries upwards. To an extent that’s true, but the increases are not limited to AI roles. Even developers, most at risk of disruption, are taking home more than twice the average UK pay.

We’ll be revisiting this research at key points through the year to track changes over time, so stay tuned to Computing.

These salary figures echo the research findings we published earlier this month: everyone is using AI, but the impact remains limited. Even the productivity stats aren't yet playing out: the 4% gains seen so far are well behind the predictions of 15%.

And while some tech giants are slashing staff and blaming it on AI (debateable), at least one is going in the opposite direction: AI is actually boosting hiring at IBM.

Perhaps, away from the hype, AI has always been just another tool.

Although linked above, it bears repeating: we’ve got exclusive insights into IT salaries in the UK, USA and Germany, as well as research into AI fatigue and current use cases for gen AI among UK IT leaders.

As exciting as AI is, a series of roadblocks are getting in the way of rapid expansion. I talked to Gareth Williams at construction giant Arup about the major factors slowing the datacentre boom, not least of which is the so-called RAMageddon memory shortage. Lars Bube of CRN Germany has looked into how memory became a sellers’ market.

Also on AI, Penny Horwood talked to senior IT and AI leaders at AXA about how it is using artificial intelligence to rewrite the insurance model.

Lorraine Dodd, IS/IT Director at Renault UK, discusses the importance of transparency; and in our latest episode of Ctrl Alt Lead, E.ON Energy’s Kara Flook talks about the rise of the non-technical tech leader.

Finally, we’ve opened entries for our Cloud Excellence Awards!