In this episode, we wrapped up 2025 by reflecting on what we talked about on the podcast, where AI is and where it's heading, and looked ahead to 2026. We also discussed some of our favourite sci-fi books we read last year!

Links from the show:

- that YouTube video Shaun mentioned, "Are we stuck with the same Desktop UX forever?": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZTOjd_bOQ

- our interview with Scott Hanselman whose blog post about Dark Matter Developers is always on our mind: https://halfstackdatascience.com/s4e1-meaningful-uses-of-ai-with-scott-hanselman

- our interview with Kirsten Hill who's empowered by AI to build the survey platform of her dreams: https://halfstackdatascience.com/s4e4-better-survey-design-with-ai-with-kirsten-hill

The sci-fi books we mentioned (and loved):

- The Three-Body Problem (book 1 of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20518872-the-three-body-problem

- Children of Time: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25499718-children-of-time

- Sea of Tranquility: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58446227-sea-of-tranquility

- Sleeping Giants (book 1 of The Themis Files trilogy): https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25733990-sleeping-giants

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David’s book, The Well-Grounded Data Analyst is out! ⁠https://www.manning.com/books/the-well-grounded-data-analyst⁠

If you want to find out more, we have a whole episode about it: https://halfstackdatascience.com/s3-finale-the-well-grounded-data-analyst-with-david-asboth