SafeguardSafeguardsemerging

Review and sunset provisions

A mechanism's specification of how and when it will be reviewed, what evidence will be gathered about whether it works, and how it can be revised or retired.

Inspect in field model About this object

Source-linked claims

source-assertionConfidence: highContestability: medium

Anticipatory governance is a broad societal capacity to act on emerging technologies while their management is still possible, through foresight, engagement, and integration.

Our reading: Source-level citation pending passage review. Guston's definition builds on earlier work with Sarewitz and on nanotechnology governance programs.

Inspect evidence · source links · passage review pending

Passage summaries are paraphrases, not quotations. Open the source to read the full passage.

Understanding 'anticipatory governance'

Source-level attribution only. A precise supporting passage has not yet been recorded. Existing locator: Abstract and introduction.

source-assertionConfidence: highContestability: low

Early in a technology's development change is easy but its consequences are poorly understood; once the consequences are clear, change has become costly and slow.

Our reading: Source-level citation pending passage review against the 1980 text. The dilemma is widely restated; this record cites the original.

Inspect evidence · source links · passage review pending

Passage summaries are paraphrases, not quotations. Open the source to read the full passage.

The Social Control of Technology

Source-level attribution only. A precise supporting passage has not yet been recorded. Existing locator: Chapter 1, 'The dilemma of control'.

Appears in worked analyses

Releasing a significantly more capable frontier model
A frontier AI developer must decide whether to release a model that is significantly more capable than anything currently deployed.
Licensing an imported AI triage system
A health ministry in a middle-income country must decide whether to license an AI triage system that was trained and evaluated elsewhere.
Adopting an AI shortlisting tool under a risk-based law
An employer operating in the European Union must decide whether to adopt a vendor's AI system to shortlist job applicants.
A school decides whether to pilot an AI tutoring tool
A secondary school's leadership must decide whether to run a one-term pilot of a commercial AI tutoring tool for pupils aged 11 to 16.
A community organisation deploys a multilingual AI assistant
A community organisation must decide whether to launch an AI chat assistant that answers residents' questions about public services in several languages.
A child-safety regulator responds to a companion chatbot teenagers use
A national child-safety regulator must decide how to respond to a companion chatbot that many teenagers use. It could issue guidance, open an investigation, require design changes within its powers, or recommend new rules.

Provenance

Understanding 'anticipatory governance'
Social Studies of Science (SAGE) · scholarship · publication date not recorded · Social Studies of Science 44(2), 2014, pp. 218–242
The DOI resolves to the publisher's record; the article is behind a subscription. Passage-level review is pending.
guston-anticipatory-governance · Last checked 2026-09-06 · claims and passages
The Social Control of Technology
Frances Pinter, London · book · publication date not recorded · 1980 edition, 200 pages
The link is an Internet Archive library record with restricted lending, not an open copy. Locators refer to chapter 1. Passage-level review is pending.
collingridge-social-control · Last checked 2026-09-06 · claims and passages
Developing a framework for responsible innovation
Research Policy (Elsevier) · scholarship · publication date not recorded · Research Policy 42(9), 2013, pp. 1568–1580
The DOI resolves to the publisher's record. Passage-level review is pending.
stilgoe-responsible-innovation · Last checked 2026-09-06 · claims and passages

Cross-cutting tests

Lifecycle stages

Monitoring
Retirement

Levels

Diagnostic questions this concept helps answer

06What safeguards translate the objective into practice?

Relations in the model

Review and sunset provisions — guards against → Governance lock-in
Mapping: asserted
Governance lock-in
A mechanism that specifies its own review, evidence and revision path is the anticipatory-governance response to rules written before the technology is understood.
Inspect evidence · source links · passage review pending
Passage summaries are paraphrases, not quotations. Open the source to read the full passage.
Understanding 'anticipatory governance' (opens in a new tab)
Source-level attribution only. A precise supporting passage has not yet been recorded.
Developing a framework for responsible innovation (opens in a new tab)
Source-level attribution only. A precise supporting passage has not yet been recorded.

Related concepts

Governance lock-in Reversibility window Incident reporting and post-deployment monitoring