AI State of the Union (October 2026)

It's strange how quickly momentum can shift in these AI races.Two months ago Anthropic was in the dirt compared to OpenAI. Astra had just crushed everything, and Anthropic was falling massively behind. At least according to vibes, and Twitter, and overall sentiment.Another major AI vibe shift is happening. The tech is moving so fast that our collective reactions are emotionally exaggerated.Finding the Middle in AI Narratives (2026)And then in the last 2-3 weeks everything has inverted again. Opus 5.5 has blown everyone away. Some really bad stuff has happened with the usage situation in Codex versus Claude Code. Now it feels extremely high anxiety to use Codex because you just see your credits going away instantly.And on the Claude Code side, Opus is way cheaper than Fable and better in many places. Now with Sonnet 5.5 released, the combination of Opus and Sonnet means you can run on a $200 sub for what feels like 3 to 10 times as long as just a few weeks ago.This anxiety thing is…