Honored to be included in this issue of Futures in Context alongside Vilas Dhar and Michael Santoro.

My argument was simple: AI governance cannot stop at frameworks on paper or the mere presence of a human in the loop.

The real question is who has the authority to challenge, override, or stop a system once it is deployed.

Who can stop the machine?

That is where governance begins.

The tools we're building to govern AI are already shaped by AI itself. Who sets the terms, and why, is the question this issue of Futures in Context sits with.

Vilas Dhar, President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and former member of the UN Secretary-General's High-Level Advisory Body on AI, makes the case that calling AI civic infrastructure isn't just a metaphor. It's a shift that changes every obligation we have toward it, the same ones we apply to water, electricity, and roads.

Arthur Sidney, public policy strategist, attorney, and former U.S. Congressional Chief of Staff, discusses why having a governance framework on paper is never enough, who actually has the power to stop a system once it's deployed, and what Africa is getting right that the United States isn't.

Michael Santoro, business ethicist and senior fellow at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, explains why "human in the loop" is the wrong answer to the wrong question when it comes to agentic AI and why, without solving the denominator problem, any framework for measuring AI harm is built on sand.