Europe's top bankers and financial regulators just realized artificial intelligence doesn't wait for regulatory approval before doing things. Stunning insight from the continent that brought you eighteen-month comment periods and three-hour lunch breaks.
The officials are grappling. That's the word they used. Grappling. Like they're in a wrestling match with a technology that's been iterating daily since 2017 while they were still debating whether blockchain needed a subcommittee.
AI is outpacing the rules. You know what else outpaces European financial rules? Everything. A sloth on Ambien outpaces European financial rules. Your grandmother's dial-up connection outpaces European financial rules. But sure, let's pretend this is about AI being too fast and not about regulators moving like they're paid by the hour to discuss font choices on compliance documents.
Here's what's really happening. Banks want to use AI to make money. Regulators want to regulate AI so they look busy. Neither group understands how the technology actually works. But both groups are very concerned. Very, very concerned. They're holding conferences about it. They're forming working groups. They're grappling.
The best part? They're warning us. Like we're supposed to panic because European banking regulators can't keep up with software updates. The same people who thought negative interest rates were a sustainable monetary policy now want us to trust their timeline for AI governance.
Retail traders are reading this headline and thinking it matters. Like some bureaucrat in Frankfurt is going to stop an algorithm from front-running their Tesla calls. Like regulatory frameworks have ever protected anyone from getting their face ripped off by high-frequency trading systems that make decisions in nanoseconds.
The rules will come. They'll arrive in 2029. They'll address problems from 2023. And AI will still be doing whatever the f*ck it wants because code doesn't read memos.
Photo by Christian Lue on Unsplash
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