§ Global Signals
The AI hype cycle is bad for policy. Especially for good policy.
Volatile public attention is the wrong operating condition for institutional design. A note on the cost of narrative whiplash.
Public attention on AI has oscillated between existential alarm and imminent abundance roughly every six months for the last two years. This is a poor operating condition for institutional design.
Why it matters
Good public policy tends to require sustained attention from stable constituencies. Narrative whiplash produces the opposite: rushed frameworks during peaks of fear, quiet rollback during the troughs, and very little durable institutional work in between.
A calmer register
The most important contribution the serious end of the AI conversation can make is to maintain a calmer register. Specific, institutionally grounded, comfortable with uncertainty, and unimpressed by the quarterly mood. The policy work that will age well is being written in that register right now, often by people you have not heard of.
About the author
Qiqing He works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, workforce transformation, and public-interest institutions. Her work translates technical change into institutional readiness.