{"id":95092,"date":"2026-01-31T19:33:59","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T19:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns"},"modified":"2026-01-31T19:55:55","modified_gmt":"2026-01-31T19:55:55","slug":"ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns","title":{"rendered":"AI needs its own \u2018Mark Carney moment\u2019, expert warns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; South-Africa. <\/strong><\/span>Artificial intelligence is advancing at breakneck speed, but governments are moving far too slowly to regulate it \u2013 a failure that could leave societies, workers and children dangerously exposed.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the warning from tech and child-safety expert Dean McCoubrey, who says AI urgently needs its own \u2018Mark Carney moment\u2019 \u2013 a clear, authoritative intervention that forces global leaders to confront the risks of unchecked technological power.<\/p>\n<p>McCoubrey was speaking in response to a widely praised speech by Mark Carney, which challenged the stability of the global order and called out the concentration of power in too few hands.<\/p>\n<p><b>Concentrated power, familiar risks<\/b><\/p>\n<p>McCoubrey says the fear is not new, but AI has dramatically intensified it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re talking about the entire body of human knowledge being ingested into proprietary models,\u201d he said. \u201cThat creates a future where humanity may have to pay private corporations to access its own collective history.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He argues that long before tools like ChatGPT became publicly available in 2022, big tech companies were already shaping behaviour through algorithms.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey were driving our beliefs, dividing us, influencing us, and that was before AI made it possible for anyone to publish anything that sounds authoritative and can go viral.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b>Governments \u2018too slow\u2019, AI \u2018too fast\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n<p>According to McCoubrey, the current moment mirrors the early days of social media, when regulators failed to act decisively.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGovernments are too slow, and AI is too fast,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t put guardrails on social media early enough, and we\u2019re repeating the same mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He pointed to recent controversies around AI-generated explicit images as proof that the technology has raced ahead of ethical boundaries, with few real consequences for companies that enable abuse.<\/p>\n<p><b>Children and jobs in the firing line<\/b><\/p>\n<p>A major concern, he said, is how unprepared society is for the impact on children and workers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen kids who are under 13 now leave school in five years, what version of AI will they be facing? And how will they cope if we haven\u2019t trained them?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He also warned of mass job displacement as companies replace workers with AI tools.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHow are governments protecting people whose jobs are already under threat? You can\u2019t just fire people and say, \u2018I\u2019ve got an AI bot for that\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b>Lessons from social media<\/b><\/p>\n<p>McCoubrey believes AI regulation could still learn from the eventual pushback against social media harms, driven by whistleblowers, researchers and public pressure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe didn\u2019t have one single Carney moment with social media; we had several,\u201d he said, referencing activists and researchers who exposed the impact of platforms on children and democracy.<\/p>\n<p>Only years later did countries like Australia and France begin moving toward tougher rules.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t have that kind of time with AI.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b>\u2018The alternative is ownership\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Crucially, McCoubrey says the answer is not rejecting technology.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe alternative is not withdrawal from innovation. It\u2019s ownership \u2013 ownership of who we vote into power, who we partner with, and what values we\u2019re willing to trade away for convenience.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He described himself as \u2018pro-tech but more pro-kids and pro-jobs\u2019, revealing that he lost two businesses to AI before adapting and building an AI agency himself.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love the technology,\u201d he said. \u201cBut humans are still magnificent. AI doesn\u2019t read the room. It doesn\u2019t have intuition. It doesn\u2019t smell, sense or feel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Without firm leadership, he warned, decisions about society\u2019s future will be left to a handful of hyperscale tech companies.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey\u2019re racing to trillion-dollar valuations,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they won\u2019t protect us, then governments must, and they need to start now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">South-Africa<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; South-Africa. Artificial intelligence is advancing at breakneck speed, but governments are moving far too slowly to regulate it \u2013 a failure that could leave societies, workers and children dangerously exposed. That\u2019s the warning from tech and child-safety expert Dean McCoubrey, who says AI urgently needs its own \u2018Mark Carney moment\u2019 \u2013 a clear, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":95091,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,9],"tags":[275],"class_list":["post-95092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-miscellaneous","tag-south-africa-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>AI needs its own \u2018Mark Carney moment\u2019, expert warns - South Africa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Artificial intelligence is advancing at breakneck speed, but governments are moving far too slowly to regulate it \u2013 a fa ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AI needs its own \u2018Mark Carney moment\u2019, expert warns\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Artificial intelligence is advancing at breakneck speed, but governments are moving far too slowly to regulate it \u2013 a fa ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"South Africa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-01-31T19:33:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-01-31T19:55:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/sites\/31\/2026\/01\/sm_1769876712.401498.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"AI needs its own \u2018Mark Carney moment\u2019, expert warns\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-01-31T19:33:59+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-01-31T19:55:55+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns\"},\"wordCount\":620,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/sites\/31\/2026\/01\/sm_1769876712.401498.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"South-Africa\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"miscellaneous\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/ai-needs-its-own-mark-carney-moment-expert-warns\",\"name\":\"AI needs its own \u2018Mark Carney moment\u2019, expert warns - 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