Google I/O 2026: Agentic AI & Gemini 3.5 Flash Unveiled

Google I/O 2026 featured a 41-minute panel session titled "Defining the agentic AI era." This discussion, held on the Dialogues stage, included Logan Kilpatrick, Koray Kavukcuoglu, Liz Reid, Josh Woodward, and Jeff Dean. The panel covered technical decisions behind Gemini 3.5 Flash and the architecture of Gemini Spark. They also discussed the role of hardware in inference speed and the future of human-machine interfaces. Koray Kavukcuoglu described Gemini 3.5 Flash as the first installment of the 3.5 series. The focus for this series is on coding capability and agentic workflows. He noted a "huge improvement" in performance compared to six months prior, driven by intense internal use. Jeff Dean mentioned that Google's TPU program has reached its eighth generation. This information is important for understanding the technical direction of AI development.