5 Trends That Defined AI Engineering at World’s Fair 2026
Latent Space Richard MacManus
Developers are shifting focus from autonomous agents themselves to the systems that manage them, with "loop engineering" becoming central to how AI agents are controlled and evaluated in production. A survey by Barr Yaron identified coding agents as a key trend, with tools like Claude Code, Cursor, and Gemini CLI replacing traditional IDE-based development by handling broader objectives across multiple files. Enterprises are now deploying AI engineering specialists called forward-deployed engineers to implement AI capabilities, with companies building "software factories" that automate parts of the development lifecycle while keeping humans in control of critical decisions.
Why it matters
At this year's AIE World’s Fair, AI engineering entered a new phase: building systems around agents, rather than just building with agents.
