Forecasting AI Policy in 2026

The past year has been nothing short of transformative for artificial intelligence. AI transitioned from a curiosity that struggled to complete basic math or even count to an agentic tool that can perform a significant amount of economically valuable tasks as well or better than a human. Surging frontier capabilities set off a geostrategic AI race, too: less than a year ago, DeepSeek released its R1 model, sparking concerns of a so-called Sputnik moment in AI and setting the tone for a year that would be defined by the global race to AI.