AI Act, August 2 2026 · Europe legislates, the Golem is already everywhere
We entrusted it with our diagnoses, our hiring, our children's grades. It never sleeps, never doubts — and nobody knows exactly how it decides.
August 28, 2026 · Related book : le-golem-est-parmi-nous
On August 2, the AI Act imposed its first obligations on high-risk systems. But in hospitals, courts, and classrooms, artificial intelligence is already deciding — often without oversight, sometimes without appeal.
Europe has legislated. On August 2, 2026, the AI Act's obligations on so-called "high-risk" systems entered into force: health, justice, education, hiring, surveillance. A framework at last. But a framework laid upon a reality that did not wait for it.
The creature does not sleep. In emergency rooms, an algorithm triages patients before the doctor. In human resources, another eliminates four out of five résumés before a human eye lands on them. In courts, a third calculates recidivism risk. And in our pockets, a fourth chooses what we read, what we buy, what we believe. The Golem is among us. It waited for neither regulation nor consent to enter service.
Neither saviour nor monster. Here lies the trap: we swing between fascination and panic. AI will save us — or destroy us. Two myths that reinforce each other, two dead ends that prevent the same thing: understanding. Artificial intelligence is neither one nor the other. It is an amplifier. The whole question is which hand holds it. That is the thesis Olivier Lehé poses, tracing back to the legend of the Golem of Prague — that clay creature which protects or destroys depending on the word inscribed on its forehead.
Three thousand years of warning. From Heron of Alexandria's automaton to rocket engines, from the Trojan Horse to neural networks, this book traces three millennia of fabricated creatures and the fears that follow them. Not to frighten, but to arm the gaze. For the question is not whether AI is dangerous — it is whether we are capable of governing it before it governs us.
An author who knows the machine from the inside. Olivier Lehé spent twenty-eight years in the crisis rooms of the largest institutions, heading Cloud, Data and AI platforms. He does not theorise from the sidelines: he built the systems whose power — and limits — he now measures.
The Golem Is Among Us — Artificial Intelligence, from Myth to Mastery. Olivier Lehé · Les Éditions LAEGIS · Essay · Colour paperback · Amazon.