AI needs its own ‘Mark Carney moment’, expert warns

Artificial intelligence is advancing at breakneck speed, but governments are moving far too slowly to regulate it – a failure that could leave societies, workers and children dangerously exposed.

That’s the warning from tech and child-safety expert Dean McCoubrey, who says AI urgently needs its own ‘Mark Carney moment’ – a clear, authoritative intervention that forces global leaders to confront the risks of unchecked technological power.

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.

Concentrated power, familiar risks

McCoubrey says the fear is not new, but AI has dramatically intensified it.

“We’re talking about the entire body of human knowledge being ingested into proprietary models,” he said. “That creates a future where humanity may have to pay private corporations to access its own collective history.”

He argues that long before tools like ChatGPT became publicly available in 2022, big tech companies were already shaping behaviour through algorithms.

“They 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.”

Governments ‘too slow’, AI ‘too fast’

According to McCoubrey, the current moment mirrors the early days of social media, when regulators failed to act decisively.

“Governments are too slow, and AI is too fast,” he said. “We didn’t put guardrails on social media early enough, and we’re repeating the same mistake.”

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.

Children and jobs in the firing line

A major concern, he said, is how unprepared society is for the impact on children and workers.

“When 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’t trained them?”

He also warned of mass job displacement as companies replace workers with AI tools.

“How are governments protecting people whose jobs are already under threat? You can’t just fire people and say, ‘I’ve got an AI bot for that’.”

Lessons from social media

McCoubrey believes AI regulation could still learn from the eventual pushback against social media harms, driven by whistleblowers, researchers and public pressure.

“We didn’t have one single Carney moment with social media; we had several,” he said, referencing activists and researchers who exposed the impact of platforms on children and democracy.

Only years later did countries like Australia and France begin moving toward tougher rules.

“We don’t have that kind of time with AI.”

‘The alternative is ownership’

Crucially, McCoubrey says the answer is not rejecting technology.

“The alternative is not withdrawal from innovation. It’s ownership – ownership of who we vote into power, who we partner with, and what values we’re willing to trade away for convenience.”

He described himself as ‘pro-tech but more pro-kids and pro-jobs’, revealing that he lost two businesses to AI before adapting and building an AI agency himself.

“I love the technology,” he said. “But humans are still magnificent. AI doesn’t read the room. It doesn’t have intuition. It doesn’t smell, sense or feel.”

Without firm leadership, he warned, decisions about society’s future will be left to a handful of hyperscale tech companies.

“They’re racing to trillion-dollar valuations,” he said. “If they won’t protect us, then governments must, and they need to start now.”

For more details, listen to McCoubrey using the audio player below: