Etzioni on AI: AI’s ‘annual physical’ surfaces one big surprise

Stanford recently released the 2026 AI Index , the field’s annual physical. One finding stopped me cold: the country that leads AI development is not the country that leads AI adoption . The AI Index is the most rigorous data-driven portrait of where AI stands: a yearly checkup across technical performance, investment, the labor market, the environment, public attitudes, regulation, the US-China race, and more.