Governance Gap (Juma Reading)

The governance gap, in Juma's framework, is the specific form the adaptation gap takes during the AI transition: a structural mismatch between the timescale of technological capability and the timescale of governance institutions that is measured not in percentages but in orders of magnitude. The technology develops on a timeline of months. Educational systems operate on a timeline of years to decades. Regulatory systems operate on timelines that vary from years to decades depending on jurisdiction. The gap between these timelines is the widest of any transition Juma documented, and in the growing gap, the transition costs concentrate on populations that can least afford to bear them — precisely the populations whose fears contain the information the institutions need, and precisely the populations the institutional process is least equipped to hear.