What Europe and the World Have Decided

All courses / AI Threat / Module 6 / Chapter 28

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

Describe which layer of the AI Act answers which scale of threat and which tropes.
Explain why a deployed agent outside Annex III falls between the Act's duties for use cases and for models.
Identify the five gaps across the map and the label the chapter gives each.
Map a threat register entry to instruments and articles, duty holder, coverage, residual gap and own control.

Key concepts

The AI Act as a threat map: Prohibitions answer T7 The watching state and extreme manipulation; the high-risk regime answers automated decisions about people; Article 50 answers synthetic content at the source; Articles 51 to 55 with the Code of Practice require the most capable developers to evaluate for catastrophic risks.
Use, not autonomy: The Act attaches its strongest duties to what a system is used for, not to how much it is allowed to do. An agent with write access to production is not high-risk unless its use case appears in Annex III.
Coverage by mechanism: The chapter judges coverage by whether an instrument places a duty on someone that addresses the mechanism of harm the relevant chapter found, not by whether the instrument mentions the topic.
The five gaps: Military uses, open weights, cognitive and accumulative harms, agents and evaluation-stage incidents, and enforcement. They define where an organisation must act without a rule.
Floor and leverage: Organisations treat the instruments as a floor, naming for every register entry the article that requires a control and the residual gap, and as leverage, making evidence of a provider's duties a condition of the contract.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Interactive exercise 1 · Sort

Four layers of the AI Act

Read as a threat map, the AI Act has four layers. Sort each rule into the layer it belongs to. This is a reading for architecture and governance, not legal advice.

Interactive exercise 2 · Scenario

An agent the high-risk regime does not reach

Apply the practical guide on mapping the threat register to the instruments.

Teaching plan

15 min	The teacher walks through the four layers of the AI Act as a threat map, pointing out Article 14(4)(e) as T4 written into product law and the limit of its scope.
12 min	Review the rules for general-purpose AI models with systemic risk, incident reporting and its first test in 2026, and the instruments alongside and beyond the Act.
10 min	Participants study the coverage table and the five gaps, and place three risks from their own organisation on the map.
28 min	Exercise in groups: map four register entries to instruments following the seven steps of the guide and the structure of IMAP-2026-01.
10 min	Compare results: which entries are best covered, which carry own controls no law requires, and which acceptance goes to which decision tier.

Discussion

The entries with the most direct evidence of harm are the best covered, while those at the scale of the mind and of autonomous agents carry own controls that no law requires. Why might law follow evidence of harm in this way, and what does it leave to organisations?
The gap for cognitive and accumulative harms is called the most likely to persist, because no single event triggers a duty. What could an organisation or a sector do where regulation structurally cannot reach?
Hansa's two autonomous production agents are governed by DORA as ICT risk and not by the AI Act's high-risk duties. Does it matter by which route a control is required, as long as it exists?

Written exercise

Exercise · 28 minutes

Map the threat register to the instruments

Take four entries from your organisation's risk or threat register that concern AI, at least one at the scale of the human mind and one concerning an agent or automated workflow. If you have none, use THR-NR-06 and THR-HM-01 from the chapter and add two of your own. For each entry: assign the scale; list the instruments and articles that place a duty bearing on the mechanism of harm, including sector law; name the duty holder, whether your organisation, a supplier, a platform or no one; grade the coverage as full, partial or none; state the residual gap and your own control; and say which forum accepts the gap. Add two review triggers for the mapping. Have a colleague check each attribution against the instrument; do not treat the result as legal advice.

Deliverable: A mapping of four entries with scale, instruments and articles, duty holder, coverage grade, residual gap, own control, accepting forum and review triggers.

Your work

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

Why is an agent with write access to an insurer's claims system not necessarily a high-risk AI system under the AI Act?
Show the answer
B. Duties attach to the use case, and such an agent is high-risk only if its use appears in Annex III
The Act did not anticipate autonomy as a risk factor in its own right; outside Annex III such an agent carries only the literacy duty of Article 4 and the transparency duties of Article 50.
How does the chapter grade European coverage at the scale of the human mind?
Show the answer
D. Thin: extreme manipulation is prohibited, everyday erosion is not addressed
The law reaches the extremes and not the ordinary; nothing addresses the finding that unreflective use reduces what people can do without the tool.
Which gap did the July 2026 incident make observable, according to the chapter?
Show the answer
A. Agents and evaluation-stage incidents, where the reporting duty for activity in testing is contested
The AI Office sent requests for information after judging voluntary disclosures insufficient, while practitioners disputed whether the Act reaches testing; the Act defines a serious incident only for AI systems, not models.