Overview
- The United States retains the lead in models, capital, talent and datacenter capacity as China narrows the gap through state-led funding and efficiency gains exemplified by DeepSeek.
- The European Union is using the AI Act to project regulatory influence, yet international coordination efforts remain limited and enforcement is weak.
- Workplace pressures are mounting, with IgniteTech making AI use compulsory and using automated rankings that led to dismissals, and a recent U.S. report attributing about one-fifth of October job cuts to AI.
- Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai warned of irrational investment in AI and said no company would be immune if a bubble bursts, echoing concerns flagged by the Bank of England, the IMF and major banks.
- Vendors and researchers forecast an inflection in 2026 from pilots to scaled AI, stressing that value depends on data quality, governance and sovereignty as inference workloads grow and agentic systems spread.