AI guardrails emerged as a central theme at MWC26 Barcelona, where executives from Netcracker, Exponential View, and Blizzard addressed the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence and the governance frameworks needed to manage it responsibly.
Falling Costs Drive Insatiable Demand
Azeem Azhar, founder of Exponential View, described the current moment as an inflection point in how intelligence is created and deployed. He noted that AI costs fall sharply each year, which in turn drives usage upward at an accelerating rate.
“It gets cheaper and cheaper and cheaper every year. We have got an insatiable demand for intelligence.”
Azeem Azhar, Founder, Exponential View
Supporting that demand, big tech companies are forecast to spend $650 billion in 2026 on physical infrastructure. Moreover, roughly 75 per cent of that spending targets resource-intensive AI factories, according to Azhar.
AI Guardrails Needed as Medicine Enters an Intelligent Era
Netcracker co-founder, chairman, and CEO Andrew Feinberg outlined the potential of AI in the medical sector. He stated the technology supports personalised treatment, accelerates diagnosis, simplifies drug development, and enables disease prediction.
“At scale, the impact is measured in millions of lives. This is medicine entering its intelligent era.”
Andrew Feinberg, Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO, Netcracker
However, Feinberg cautioned that AI is now embedded in live production environments in both medicine and national communications networks. In those settings, he said, failure carries real human consequences. He warned that if “optimisation outpaces oversight”, systems will become too embedded to safely change.
Telecoms Networks Generate Data That AI Can Interpret
Feinberg also addressed the telecommunications sector, noting that networks generate vast telemetry and behavioural data but often lack the ability to interpret it in real time. With AI, he said, operators can deploy predictive network maintenance and counter cyberattacks before revenue is lost.
Feinberg argued that the leaders of the AI era will not be those who build the fastest AI. Instead, he said, they will be those with the discipline to govern it. Responsible AI governance, in his view, must be built into systems from the outset rather than applied after deployment.
Blizzard Urges Human Creativity at the Centre of Game Development
Blizzard CEO Johanna Faries offered a perspective from the gaming industry, advocating for a balanced approach to adopting new technologies while preserving human creativity. She stressed that safety, security, and governance must remain central to the company’s developer-led approach to integrating AI.
“While it’s good to know what you can push on… how do we do things responsibly? What’s going to be the impact on our art?”
Johanna Faries, CEO, Blizzard
Furthermore, Faries’ remarks reinforced a broader consensus among the panellists: the pace of AI adoption must not outrun the cybersecurity and governance structures designed to keep it in check. The session at MWC26 underscored that infrastructure, governance, and human ingenuity remain the defining limits of AI’s trajectory.