The European Union’s recent adjustments to the AI Act — delaying key enforcement timelines, softening restrictions around data use, expanding real-world testing, and strengthening the AI Office — reveal something more profound than regulatory fine-tuning. They illuminate the central tension of the Cognitive Revolution: exponential technologies evolving inside institutions that were never designed for exponential change.
These amendments are neither a retreat nor a breakthrough. They recognize that the central challenge of governing AI is not control — it is tempo. The law moves slowly; intelligence no longer does. As “The Cognitive Revolution” argues, we are now living in the “pacing problem,” in which the pace of change consistently exceeds the pace of our social, political, and ethical adaptation.
The delays underscore a hard truth: rules cannot be enforced before the world they regulate finishes shifting beneath them. GDPR adjustments reveal another truth: ethics and economics collide in ways that transform governance into a political negotiation. And the growing role of the European AI Office reflects a third: effective oversight must evolve from static compliance into anticipatory governance — institutions capable of learning, sensing, and adapting alongside the technology they oversee.
The EU is not failing; it is wrestling with a problem every democracy will face. These amendments do not undermine the Act. They expose the limits of old regulatory logic and the need for dynamic, systemic, and resilient governance frameworks.
The Cognitive Revolution is not asking whether AI can be controlled. It is asking whether our institutions can learn fast enough to stay in a relationship with it.
#TheCognitiveRevolution #ItIsAboutUs #TheAlgorithmicAge #AnticipatoryGovernance
