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AI Policy Is Losing the Race

AI Policy Is Losing the Race

Last updated on: October 25, 2026 at 12:09 pm by Gleb Tsipursky

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AI Policy Is Losing the Race 2026-10-25T12:09:37-04:00 Gleb Tsipursky

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AI Policy

Artificial intelligence is no longer an emerging technology waiting for its moment. It has arrived, scaled, and embedded itself in daily work faster than most governments, schools, and companies seem able to process. Stanford’s 2026 HAI Index captures the central fact of the new era: AI capability is still accelerating, adoption is spreading at historic speed, and the systems, institutions, and policy meant to manage the fallout are lagging badly. That mismatch, more than any new model release, is the story that matters.

Adoption Without Absorption

The numbers no longer support the fantasy that AI is still in an experimental phase. Stanford’s latest report shows generative AI reaching mass adoption with unusual speed, while McKinsey’s 2025 global survey finds that companies are using AI widely but still struggling to turn pilots into deep operational change. AI is everywhere, but institutional absorption remains shallow.

That gap explains why the labor story is getting so tense. There is now serious evidence that AI can raise output in real jobs. A widely cited NBER study on customer support work found a 14% productivity gain on average, with much larger gains for less experienced workers. But faster work is not the same thing as a settled social contract. Productivity can rise while job ladders weaken, entry-level roles shrink, and managers quietly redesign teams around software rather than people.

The result is a strange economy: companies say AI is important, workers know it is important, and yet few institutions have rebuilt hiring, training, compensation, or evaluation around that fact. AI is not waiting for permission. It is forcing a reorganization that many leaders still describe as a tool rollout.

The Hidden Costs of Intelligence

The second delusion is that AI is mostly a software phenomenon. It is not. It is an infrastructure story, an energy story, and increasingly a geopolitical story. The AI Index argues that frontier development is concentrating around a small number of firms, data centers, and supply-chain choke points. That concern looks even sharper when paired with the International Energy Agency’s Energy and AI analysis, which projects a steep rise in electricity demand from data centers in the coming decade.

This matters because the economics of AI are being shaped by what sits behind the chatbot. Compute capacity, specialized chips, cooling systems, grid access, and water use now matter as much as model cleverness. The IEA’s energy-demand outlook for AI makes clear that efficiency gains will help, but they will not erase the scale effect. More capable systems invite more usage, and more usage pushes infrastructure harder.

The political consequence is obvious. Whoever controls the stack, chips, foundries, cloud platforms, and power, controls more of the future than whoever writes the best marketing copy about “responsible innovation.” That is why the report’s focus on AI sovereignty feels so timely. Nations are waking up to the fact that dependence on external models or external compute is not just a business issue. It is becoming a strategic vulnerability.

Governance Is Now the Real Competitive Edge

Policy still looks smaller than the problem, but it is no longer absent. Europe’s AI Act framework has created the world’s most ambitious attempt to regulate AI by risk category. In the United States, however, the Trump administration refuses to consider any real AI regulation, and is trying to prevent states from regulating it as well, instead focusing on pushing the pedal full speed ahead. The US does have risk management tools such as the NIST AI Risk Management Framework. Meanwhile, the OECD AI Policy Observatory now tracks hundreds of national AI initiatives, a sign that governments everywhere know they are behind.

Yet public confidence remains weak, and not without reason. A Pew Research Center survey found a striking gap between AI experts and the public on jobs, the economy, and social impact. Experts see upside. The public sees disruption. Both sides, in different ways, are reacting to the same reality: AI is moving from novelty to structure.

That means governance is no longer a brake on innovation. It is part of the innovation race itself. The countries and companies that win the next phase will not simply build stronger models. They will build more trusted deployment systems, clearer accountability, better workforce transitions, and more resilient public infrastructure.

Conclusion

The most important question in AI has changed. It is no longer whether models will keep improving. They will. The harder question is whether our institutions can improve fast enough to live with them. The real divide in 2026 is not between believers and skeptics. It is between organizations that understand AI as a total system shift, and those still treating it like a clever app. The first group is redesigning for the future. The second is waiting to be overwhelmed.

Key Take-Away

AI is reshaping work, infrastructure, and global competition faster than institutions can adapt. A strong AI policy is now essential to build trust, guide responsible adoption, and ensure innovation benefits society sustainably… >Click to tweet

Image credit: Thirdman/pexels

Originally published in Disaster Avoidance Experts

Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, called the “Office Whisperer” by The New York Times, helps tech-forward leaders stop overpaying for AI while boosting engagement and innovation. He serves as the CEO of the AI consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts. Dr. Gleb wrote seven best-selling books, and his forthcoming book with Georgetown University Press is The Psychology of Generative AI Adoption (2026). His most recent best-seller is ChatGPT for Leaders and Content Creators: Unlocking the Potential of Generative AI (Intentional Insights, 2023). His cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 650 articles and 550 interviews in Harvard Business Review, Inc. Magazine, USA Today, CBS News, Fox News, Time, Business Insider, Fortune, The New York Times, and elsewhere. His writing was translated into Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Korean, French, Vietnamese, German, and other languages. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training for Fortune 500 companies from Aflac to Xerox. It also comes from over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist, with 8 years as a lecturer at UNC-Chapel Hill and 7 years as a professor at Ohio State. A proud Ukrainian American, Dr. Gleb lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Business, Finance and Religion

About Dr. Gleb Tsipursky

Known as the Disaster Avoidance Expert, Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is on a mission to protect leaders from dangerous judgment errors known as cognitive biases, which devastate bottom lines and bring down high-flying careers. His expertise and passion is developing the most effective and profitable decision-making strategies, based on pragmatic business experience and cutting-edge behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience, to empower leaders to avoid business disasters and maximize their bottom lines. You can learn more here https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/glebtsipursky/ The bestselling author of several books, Dr. Tsipursky is best known for his national bestseller on avoiding disasters and achieving success in business and other life areas, The Truth Seeker’s Handbook: A Science-Based Guide. His next book, Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters, is forthcoming with Career Press in November 2019. It’s the first book to focus on cognitive biases in business leadership and reveal how leaders can overcome these dangerous judgment errors effectively. After that he’s publishing The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships with New Harbinger in April 2020, the first book to focus on cognitive biases in professional and personal relationships and illustrate how we can defeat these dangerous judgment errors in our relationships. See more information here https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/author-page/ Dr. Tsipursky’s cutting-edge thought leadership was featured in over 400 articles he published and over 350 interviews he gave to popular venues that include Fast Company, CBS News, Time, Scientific American, Psychology Today, The Conversation, Business Insider, Government Executive, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Inc. Magazine, and many others, as you can see here https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/media/ Dr. Tsipursky's expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, speaking, and training for businesses and nonprofits. He serves as the CEO of the boutique consulting, coaching, and training firm Disaster Avoidance Experts, which uses a proprietary methodology based on groundbreaking research to help leaders and organizations maximize their bottom lines by addressing potential threats, seizing unexpected opportunities, and resolving persistent personnel problems. His clients include Aflac, Balance Employment Assistance Provider, Edison Welding Institute, Fifth Third Bank, Honda, IBM, International Coaches Federation, Ohio Hospitals Association, National Association of Women Business Owners, Sentinel Real Estate, The Society for Human Resource Management, RealManage, The Columbus Foundation, Vistage, Wells Fargo, the World Wildlife Fund, and over a hundred others who achieve outstanding client results. You can learn more about that here: https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/about Dr. Tsipursky also has a strong research and teaching background in behavioral economics and cognitive neuroscience with over 15 years in academia, including 7 years as a professor at the Ohio State University and before that a Fellow at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. His dozens of peer-reviewed academic publications include journals such as Behavior and Social Issues, Journal of Social and Political Psychology, and International Journal of Existential Psychology and Psychotherapy. His civic service includes over 4 years as the Chair of the Board of Directors of Intentional Insights, an educational nonprofit advocating for research-based decision-making in all life areas. He also co-founded the Pro-Truth Pledge, a civic project to promote truthfulness and integrity for individual professionals and leaders in the same way that the Better Business Bureau serves as a commitment for businesses. He serves on the Advisory Board of Canonical Debate Lab and Planet Purpose, and is on the Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed journal Behavior and Social Issues. A highly in-demand international speaker, Dr. Tsipursky has over two decades of professional speaking experience across North America, Europe, and Australia. He gets top marks from audiences for his highly facilitative, interactive, and humor-filled speaking style and the way he thoroughly customizes speeches for diverse audiences. Meeting planners describe Dr. Tsipursky as "very relatable," as "a snap to work with," and as someone who "does everything that you would want a speaker to do." Drawing on best practices in adult learning, his programs address the wide spectrum of diverse learning styles, as attested by enthusiastic client testimonials and references. He regularly shares the stage with prominent leaders, for example recently speaking on a roundtable panel with the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Secretary General of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Elhadj As Sy, Chancellor of Austria Brigitte Bierlein, CEO of Penguin Random House Markus Dohle, and billionaire philanthropist and Chair of the Bertelsmann Management Company Liz Mohn. You can learn more about his speaking and see videos here: https://disasteravoidanceexperts.com/speaking/ Dr. Tsipursky earned his PhD in the History of Behavioral Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011, his M.A. at Harvard University in 2004, and his B.A. at New York University in 2002. He lives in and travels from Columbus, OH. In his free time, he enjoys tennis, hiking, and playing with his two cats, and most importantly, he makes sure to spend abundant quality time with his wife to avoid disasters in his personal life. Learn more about him at https://DisasterAvoidanceExperts.com/GlebTsipursky, contact him at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, follow him on Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky and Twitter @gleb_tsipursky. Most importantly, help yourself avoid disasters and maximize success, and get a free copy of the “Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace,” by signing up for his free Wise Decision Maker Course at https:// DisasterAvoidanceExperts.com/Subscribe You can read more about the author here.

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October 16, 2026

The Real AI Story Is Adoption Without Trust

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