Beyond Human Oversight: Cognitive Sovereignty in Global Governance Frameworks for Agentic Artificial Intelligence
TL;DR
This qualitative study conducts a comparative document analysis of ten influential governance instruments issued by UNESCO, the OECD, the European Union, the Council of Europe, the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology, the United Kingdom, the Group of Seven, and Singapore.
Abstract
Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) alters the governance problem because model outputs can become multi-step actions with financial, legal, informational, and social consequences. Existing governance instruments widely endorse human oversight, transparency, accountability, and redress, yet they do not consistently specify what people must remain able to do when agency is delegated to an AI system. This qualitative study conducts a comparative document analysis of ten influential governance instruments issued by UNESCO, the OECD, the European Union, the Council of Europe, the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology, the United Kingdom, the Group of Seven, and Singapore. Provision-level coding, abductive pattern analysis, negative-case examination, and a cross-framework coverage matrix identify six themes: human-centric convergence with operational divergence; oversight without empowerment; late-stage contestability; a reversibility deficit; fragmented accountability; and temporal-capability asymmetry. The paper develops cognitive sovereignty as the practically exercisable capacity to understand, authorize, interrupt, contest, restore, and assign responsibility for consequential processes delegated to AI. It then proposes the CLEAR² framework, comprising Comprehension, Legitimate authorization, Effective intervention, Appeal and contestation, Restoration and reversibility, and Responsibility and remedy. CLEAR² integrates ex ante, runtime, and ex post controls and treats the weakest capability as a constraint on meaningful human control. The study advances AI governance theory by shifting the unit of analysis from human presence to preserved agency, while offering organizations a maturity model, lifecycle control architecture, and audit questions for responsible agentic deployment.