The world is not ready for AI

AI is already deciding who gets loans, who gets job interviews, who gets flagged for benefits fraud. Not assisting humans in making those decisions. Making them. And in most countries there is no law requiring anyone to tell you AI was involved, explain why it decided what it did, or give you any way to challenge it. That needs to change. We need laws that say if an AI makes a decision about you, you have the right to know, the right to understand why, and the right to challenge it. A human must always be accountable for the outcome. That’s not anti-innovation. That’s just basic protection for people living in a world already being shaped by these systems. Most governments don’t understand it well enough to even write those laws yet. Most politicians making AI policy genuinely cannot explain how these systems work, who owns them, or what accountability looks like when they go wrong. Voluntary frameworks have failed every single time. Social media companies voluntarily committed to reducing harm. They didn’t. Financial firms voluntarily committed to responsible lending. They didn’t. Voluntary always means the least responsible actor sets the standard. Hard law is the only mechanism that has ever reliably produced accountability at scale. We need it for AI before the damage is done — not after. The window to get this right is still open. But it won’t stay open forever.