The war between fast and legitimate is here

The European Union spent four years drafting the AI Act, with OpenAI shipping GPT-4 to a hundred million users in two months. By the time Brussels finalised its definitions of "high-risk" systems, the systems in question had moved twice and grown various new appendages. The regulators were neither stupid, nor incompetent; they were doing what regulators are supposed to do. They consulted, they ran impact assessments, they debated wording, they translated everything into twenty-four languages, they voted in committee, and voted again, and harmonised national positions, and produced something defensible.The process took the time it took.This is the whole problem, and - to my mind - one of the central tensions of the decade. The institutions best able to move at the speed of the real world are the institutions we trust the least; while the institutions we trust the most are too slow, and too cumbersome to matter.I'm not here to mount a defence of the idiotic spate of DOGE inspired…