AI's major ethical and political projects for 2026

An overview of the issues that will dominate the AI governance debate this year, from algorithmic bias to growing recognition of the right not to deploy a system.

This synthesis article takes stock of the main ethical and political issues identified in 2025 to anticipate those that will structure 2026: bias and fairness of systems driven on historically unequal data, opacity of deep models whose reasoning remains unclear even for their designers, and proliferation of misleading content generated by IA.

The text notes a notable development in the debate: the growing legitimacy for an organisation to simply refuse to deploy an AI system when ethical conditions are not met — a long-marginal option, now more recognized as a responsible choice rather than a mere hindrance to innovation.