The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2026 identifies adverse outcomes from artificial intelligence as the risk category with the largest rise in ranking of any issue tracked in the survey's history, jumping from 30th place in the two-year outlook to 5th place in the longer-term outlook. Report authors describe the increase as faster and steeper than any other risk movement recorded in the survey to date.
Eighty-seven percent of respondents identified AI-related vulnerabilities as the fastest-growing cyber risk over the course of 2025, while 94% named AI as the most significant driver of cybersecurity risk overall. Despite that near-universal concern, the report finds a substantial preparedness gap: fewer than 45% of private-sector chief executives reported confidence in their organization's institutional defenses against AI-related threats, and just 31% expressed confidence in national-level preparedness.
The report also documents specific incident categories tied to the ranking increase, including AI-generated content used for election interference at what researchers describe as industrial scale during 2026 midterm and European elections, along with supply chain attacks that targeted AI development environments to insert backdoors affecting downstream software deployments. The combination of rapid risk escalation and low institutional confidence led WEF authors to flag AI governance as one of the widest readiness gaps identified in this year's survey.
Source: World Economic Forum -- https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-risks-report-2026/digest/