The Civilisational Attention Gap: how cognitive overload, fragmented governance and AI acceleration conceal systemic risk

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Artificial intelligence creates governance challenges when technological change outpaces institutions’ capacity to assess cumulative effects and preserve viable alternatives. This conceptual paper develops the Civilisational Attention Gap as an account of that mismatch. Through a purposive synthesis of technological-risk, organisational-attention and cognitive-security literatures, it examines how deficits in attention, integrated knowledge, observable evidence and coordinating authority may reinforce declining response capacity. The framework builds on established theories, including the Collingridge dilemma, and proposes dependence on the technology under assessment as a feedback mechanism. Ownerless risk describes a credible harm pathway lacking an effective institutional chain from monitoring and evidence collection to intervention and fallback coordination. A proposed ownership register would make these responsibilities auditable. Compound Cognitive Autonomy Risk applies the argument to systems combining persuasion, personal knowledge, relational authority, autonomous action and consequential access. The paper develops testable propositions and illustrative governance scenarios. These constructs remain unvalidated; their contribution is to organise empirical inquiry and identify responsibilities that nominal regulatory coverage may leave unresolved. Preprint submitted to the Journal of Cyber Policy on 13 September 2026; corrected manuscript resubmitted on 17 September 2026. This version has not been peer reviewed.