Pause AI, founded in Utrecht, Netherlands in May 2023 by Joep Meindertsma, aims to halt what it calls 'dangerous frontier AI' and staged its first protest outside Microsoft's lobbying office in Brussels.
For most of the last decade, AI governance was treated as a matter of intent. Enterprises articulated ethical principles, created review committees, and relied on internal guidelines to manage risk. That approach stopped working in 2025. Over the past year, regulators around the world moved from guidance to enforcement. What had been voluntary became mandatory. And for CIOs, the implications were immediate: AI governance is no longer judged by policy statements, but by operational evidence.