THIS WEEK IN AI
Candice Bryant Consulting
Strategic Intelligence & Public Affairs
Each week, I synthesize the key developments in AI and public policy so you don't have to. This week, I'm focusing on a single story: the World Economic Forum's 2026 Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
AI dominated at Davos, but not just as an innovation story. The conversation spanned sovereignty, energy and resource scarcity, cracks in the transatlantic alliance, and labor and the future of work.
How to Read This Newsletter: This Week in AI applies the same principles of concise writing used to brief busy policymakers. Each entry contains a summary and analysis—if you already know what happened, jump straight to "What I'm Watching" for insights.
What Happened at Davos
In one of the most widely cited sessions, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang described the current moment as "the largest infrastructure buildout in human history." He urged countries to treat AI like infrastructure, similar to roads or electricity, and build their own capabilities—a concept known as "Sovereign AI." He outlined what he called a "five-layer cake" for AI, with energy at the foundation, followed by chips and computing, cloud infrastructure, AI models, and applications.
Energy as foundational was a theme throughout the week. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said bluntly, "There is a power shortage." Elon Musk warned that chip production is on track to exceed the electricity available to run them. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that electrical grids are "fundamentally driven by governments," underscoring that private companies can only operate where underlying public infrastructure exists.
President Trump doubled down on a bring-your-own-power approach, telling tech companies he would approve nuclear power plants built to fuel data centers in just three weeks.
AI will reshape the labor market—but not how you think
While much of the public debate has focused on AI displacing white-collar jobs, Huang highlighted unprecedented demand for skilled blue-collar workers to build data centers and chip factories, noting wages are rising sharply for specialized trades. Ford CEO Jim Farley has described this as the "essential economy."
Europe, Independence, and Alliance Strain
The strain in the transatlantic relationship was a cloud over the forum from the start. President Trump's recent focus on Greenland—and the looming threat of tariffs and other actions—set an early tone.
In one session, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick declared that "globalization has failed the West and the United States of America." Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a strongly worded speech saying, "Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition."
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen summed up the fracture: "Nostalgia is part of our human story, but nostalgia will not bring back the old order."
What I'm Watching:
AI governance: safety vs. speed
President Trump's announcement that he would approve nuclear plants to fuel AI data centers in just three weeks—a significant compression of the traditional timeline—is emblematic of a broader safety-versus-speed debate that is likely to reach a boiling point this year.
The tech industry faces a maze of regulations both in the US and abroad—between the EU AI Act and US state laws slated to go into effect this year in the absence of national legislation. The Trump administration has made clear it views AI development as critical to national security and has already signaled its intentions through executive order to challenge state AI laws it deems burdensome.
Going into Davos, White House science and technology adviser Michael Kratsios called the EU AI Act "an absolute disaster," arguing instead for a light-touch approach. Trump's nuclear approval timeline reflects this same philosophy: move faster, clear bottlenecks, accept more risk.
The essential economy
For decades, the debate over bringing back manufacturing has been politically fraught as jobs moved overseas. AI flips this framing entirely. When leaders describe AI infrastructure as the "largest buildout in human history," the conversation shifts from protectionism and nostalgia to competitiveness and national security. That rhetorical shift matters.
AI's messaging problem
For months we've been discussing AI's impact on the workforce, public utilities, and even global order. Given these stakes, AI must earn its keep. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella put it this way: "We will quickly lose even the social permission to actually take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens," unless the output improves real outcomes—"health outcomes, education outcomes, public sector efficiency, private sector competitiveness."
And despite bold predictions from tech leaders like Musk about AI surpassing human intelligence, The Atlantic CEO Nicholas Thompson noted a striking gap at Davos between tech leaders, who were euphoric about AI, and leaders in other industries, who were notably underwhelmed. Many had tried to integrate AI into their organizations and found it didn't really work as anticipated or improve outcomes.
This points to a fundamental messaging challenge. The predominant framing of AI through consumer applications—chatbots being the most visible part of a much larger ecosystem—shapes how organizations approach integration and measure value. It's comparable to evaluating the internet's potential through email alone in 1995. When organizations approach AI based on its most visible but narrow use cases, they risk underutilizing its broader capacity to transform operations.
