AI is advancing faster than societies, laws and institutions can adapt, making international governance, verification and shared oversight essential.

One way to represent the AI age is with a steep curve and a gradual slope. The curve rises almost vertically: models rapidly grow cheaper, more powerful, more accessible and more deeply embedded in production, science, education, finance, administration, security, and war. Beneath it, the slope moves on a far shallower incline. This is the capacity of society to absorb change.

The slope encompasses updates to regulatory regimes, legal structures and the competencies of public administrations. It also includes changes to school curricula, business models, workflows and jobs. And it covers citizens’ ability to function in this new landscape – including their capacity to distinguish truth from simulation, persuasion from manipulation and assistance from dependency. This is the social metabolism through which a technological shock is integrated into a functioning order.

To be sure, previous technological and industrial revolutions could also be represented by such a curve and slope. Technologies advanced and spread faster than regulations, business models, education systems, labour markets and lifestyles could adapt. Transitions were often painful and never automatic. But the gap between curve and slope was smaller: in speed and scale, the AI-driven transformation appears to be in a league of its own.

Discussion about how to manage this transition usually boils down to the question of how much regulation strikes the “right balance” between innovation and safety. We do not want to put a bureaucratic lid on progress any more than we want to leave societies to absorb,........

© Pearls and Irritations