The One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), a longitudinal study that assesses AI’s development and societal impact every five years, released its third report, AI Goes Mainstream: The Scaling Era and the Rise of Generative AI. Led by an international Standing Committee of AI experts and administered out of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI), AI100 examines AI’s evolution across technical, ethical, economic, and societal domains.
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AI Goes Mainstream: The Scaling Era and the Rise of Generative AI
The 2026 AI100 Study Panel report examines the scaling of data and computing resources behind generative AI, advances in scientific discovery, investment in AI infrastructure, the concentration of frontier AI development, cybersecurity and military applications, the trustworthiness of digital media, emerging risks, public participation, and international governance. The report’s 12 key takeaways are:
- Scaling is the paradigm that has powered the chief advances in generative AI over the last five years: building AI systems using ever more compute and ever more data. But the scaling paradigm is running into data and compute constraints, shifting the frontier toward reasoning and inference-time compute.
- Like the World Wide Web, AI is a disruptive technology. It is already transforming the creative industries, mathematics, and software development, all fields that believed themselves beyond its reach. They join a long list of sectors upended by technology over the past 30 years, from journalism and the music industry to retail. Other areas that believe themselves immune from AI also stand to be disrupted in short order.
- AI is transforming science at remarkable speed, a fact recognized by the 2024 Nobel Prizes in both Physics and Chemistry. It is compressing research timescales that used to be measured in years down to months or weeks, yet it also raises many new scientific grand challenges that demand attention.
- Capital investment in AI infrastructure is unprecedented in scale and speed, propping up parts of the U.S. economy, dominating capital markets, fueling fears of a financial bubble, and straining energy and freshwater supplies.
- Frontier AI development is concentrated among a small number of U.S. and Chinese actors, raising international concerns about who will ultimately own and have access to leading-edge AI technologies.
- Cybersecurity has emerged as a major area of risk for the abuse of AI, and as a possible area in which powerful AI systems might cause real-world harms.
- Military AI has gone from being a hypothetical point of speculation to a transformative force in active conflicts.
- AI-generated imagery, audio, and video have ended the century-old assumption that evidence based on photographs and audio and video recordings is inherently trustworthy.
- AI is reshaping the lives of billions of people, yet the public has had little say in how it is developed and deployed.
- AI risks once seen as pure science fiction are now emerging, while existing ethical concerns require ever more attention.
- AI governance is fragmented and increasingly framed in terms of national security, with little international consensus among states on its direction.
- The pace of AI development over the past five years has been unprecedented, and few people predicted where AI would be today, even five years ago. If the current pace is sustained, we should expect the next five years to surprise us just as much.
“Since 2021, powerful general purpose AI tools have gone from being a point of speculation to an everyday reality, used by millions of people,” said Michael Wooldridge, 2026 chair of the AI100 Study Panel and professor at the University of Oxford. “The speed of advances over this time has been dizzying. Documenting them has been a privilege, and a huge challenge. As well as giving a straightforward account of how we got here, we offer a balanced assessment of both the risks and the extraordinary opportunities that these unprecedented technologies present.”
“The last five years constitute a watershed moment in the history of AI. This report examines what led to the extraordinary capabilities of today’s AI systems, and how they are reshaping society,” said Professor Sheila McIlraith, chair of the AI100 Standing Committee, professor of computer science at the University of Toronto. “As we look ahead, we anticipate continued increase in AI capabilities alongside transformative advances in science and medicine. Rapid change will challenge governments and industry to support and safeguard our people, our institutions, and our critical infrastructure. Both the benefits and the risks of AI technologies will require the same clear-eyed scrutiny.”
Commissioned by AI100’s Standing Committee and led by Wooldridge, the 2026 AI100 report brings together an international group of researchers from diverse disciplines including computer science, philosophy, and sociology. It responds to 12 standing questions about AI’s advances, opportunities, dangers, and societal effects, includes deep dives into AI geopolitics and the scaling era, and compares developments since 2021 with the previous panel’s assessments.
About the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence
Launched in 2014, the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100) is a longitudinal project led by an international Standing Committee of AI experts and administered out of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI). Every five years, AI100 convenes a Study Panel to assess AI’s progress and its influences on people, communities, and society across technical, ethical, economic, and societal domains. Learn more at ai100.stanford.edu.
About the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) advances AI research, education, policy, and practice to improve the human condition. Established in 2019, HAI brings together expertise across disciplines to guide AI’s development and deployment in ways that enhance human capabilities. Learn more at hai.stanford.edu.
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