This page gives a general reading of where readiness stands, pair by pair. It is deliberately broad. Places differ, and a real assessment belongs to the readiness profile for each place, made by independent estimators. The broad picture still shows where the work is most urgent.
The general picture
| Pair | Capability | Readiness | Reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cognitive automation and the floor | common | absent: proposals only | critical |
| Scoring and contestability | common | started in some places, in place in others, rarely usable against automated systems | urgent |
| Persuasion and companionship, and disclosure | common | in place in some places for disclosure and crisis protocols; absent for personalized persuasion | urgent |
| Ambient sensing and limits on inference | spreading | in place in some places for collection; absent for inference and joining data | urgent |
| Autonomous agents and answerability | spreading | started: early rulings and proposals | urgent, since agents already cause harm to third parties |
| Robots and physical work | spreading | started: safety exemptions ahead of standards, no transition funds | urgent |
| Delegated governance and its limits | spreading | started, and eroding where reviewers are cut | urgent |
| Self-directed improvement and recovery capability | spreading inside frontier labs | started, under its first real test | urgent, because lateness here cannot be repaired |
| Self-supplied inputs and the public share | spreading | started: some places now attach water and grid-cost conditions | urgent |
| Single providers and essential-layer duties | common in several layers | started | urgent |
| Figures that carry money and the estimator pool | not yet | absent | early |
The pattern is consistent: in nearly every pair, the capability is spreading or common while readiness is at best started. Very little is tested. And in some places, protections already written are being delayed, weakened, or left without the people needed to apply them, which is readiness moving backward.
Cheapest to start now
The pairs that need no new law, only the use of powers that already exist:
- Conditions at public inputs. Local and regional bodies already decide grid connections and permits for data centers. Attaching a share, training commitments, and resource limits requires no national legislation. Some places have already begun, attaching water and grid-cost conditions to new data centers.
- Procurement rules. Any government can buy only contestable, disclosed, multi-provider systems from tomorrow.
- Apprenticeship pipelines and competence reserves. Institutions can keep entry roles and manual training running now, at little cost.
- Fallback drills. Running essential services without automated systems once a year costs a day and reveals what is missing.
- Disclosure in care, companionship, and teaching. Providers can adopt it voluntarily, and sector regulators can require it under existing powers.
- Shared estimates. Statistics offices, universities, and institutes can begin estimating the floor from shared data, the first step toward the estimator pool.
The order to build
- What protects people’s ability to bargain: the floor begun, contestability made usable, disclosure required. A population that cannot afford to refuse cannot defend any other readiness.
- What uses fading leverage: the public share and essential-layer duties, attached at public inputs while firms still need them.
- What preserves alternatives and skills: second providers, apprenticeships, competence reserves, fallbacks.
- What measures and governs the rest: the estimator pool, limits on delegated governance, recovery capability at the frontier.
Nothing on this list waits for the others. The order is about urgency, not permission: each level, from a person to a government, can start its part today (readiness on the ground).