AI100 report charts generative AI’s rapid rise and societal risks
A new AI100 report examines how artificial intelligence has advanced since 2021 and how its growing use is affecting science, the economy, public trust and global security. The study argues that rapid progress is creating major opportunities alongside environmental, economic and societal risks.
- The 2026 AI100 report examines AI’s evolution since the 2021 report.
- AI is accelerating scientific research and changing software, mathematics and creative work.
- The report highlights infrastructure costs, cybersecurity threats and military uses.
- It warns that synthetic media is challenging trust in digital evidence.
- Sheila McIlraith calls for broader public participation in AI decisions.
A five-year update with a century-long view
AI Goes Mainstream: The Scaling Era and the Rise of Generative AI was released on November 10 by the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, known as AI100. Administered by Stanford University, the study is guided by an international standing committee of multidisciplinary AI experts chaired by Sheila McIlraith, a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto.
The report was written by a study panel overseen by the AI100 standing committee. Its purpose is to assess AI’s progress and impact without treating the technology as a single moment in time. The first AI100 report was published in 2016, followed by a second report in 2021.
“What makes this study unique is its longitudinal nature,” McIlraith says. “We aren’t simply providing snapshots of the status of AI every five years, but rather contributing to a longer-term understanding of the technology’s evolution and its societal impact.”
Scientific gains and expanding automation
The report describes AI’s growing role in scientific discovery, saying advances are accelerating research that once took years into months or weeks. It also identifies major changes in fields that had been considered resistant to automation, including software development, mathematics and the creative industries.
AI’s public profile changed sharply after ChatGPT’s debut in 2022 and the subsequent widespread adoption of generative AI. The report’s authors say that keeping up with the technology was difficult during the writing process, requiring them to revisit sections they had previously considered settled.
“The world has awoken to the extraordinary capabilities of AI systems, and to their surprising and sometimes disturbing failings,” McIlraith notes.
Risks, public trust and participation
Alongside potential benefits, the report highlights the environmental and economic costs of expanding AI infrastructure, cybersecurity threats and the increasing use of AI in military conflicts. It also warns that increasingly sophisticated AI-generated images, audio and video are weakening longstanding assumptions about the reliability of digital evidence.
Although AI is reshaping the lives of billions of people, the report says the public has had relatively little say in how the technology is developed and deployed. McIlraith says governments and industry will need to respond to the pace of change while protecting people, institutions and critical infrastructure.
McIlraith expects the 2026 report to reach a broader audience as AI becomes more embedded in everyday life. She describes it as a time capsule of a period when capabilities once regarded as futuristic were rapidly becoming reality, and hopes it will encourage wider public participation in decisions about AI’s development and deployment.
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