Satya Nadella This is polished, but it is empty.
“AI as scaffolding,” “diffusion,” “impact,” “human amplification” are not insights. They are safe abstractions that avoid the hard questions.
The real problem going into 2026 is not whether AI helps humans. It is who controls execution, constraints, and enforcement once AI is embedded into workflows, infrastructure, and institutions.
Talking about models vs systems without addressing control planes, auditability, authority boundaries, and failure modes under adversarial pressure is handwaving.
Diffusion is not neutral. It locks in architectures, power asymmetries, and dependency chains. Once deployed at scale, those choices cannot be unwound with ethics language or better UX.
If 2026 is the execution phase, then the missing discussion is simple:
Who owns the substrate.
Who can inspect what ran.
Who can revoke or override.
Who bears liability when systems act.
Without that, this is not a roadmap. It is narrative management.
