Why weren't the guidelines set out earlier on before AI became what it is today?
It doesn't work like that. Nobody foresees everything that will happen in the future and makes plans for it. Some things happen as events unfold. All the current banking regulations were not made in one day. I don't know of any country that is still using the first constitution the country ever made.
It's the same with AI. Regulations are guidelines that will be made as the technology grows and advances. So you can't blame them for not setting guidelines from the beginning. Besides, AI did not just become a big deal overnight. There was no date that was set as the day AI would become a big deal, so guidelines could be set before that day. It just started growing step by step. Just like crypto.
Crypto wasn't so big from the beginning, so there were no regulations, but as it got bigger, governments around the world started making regulations.
Discussions and research about AI have been going on since around the 60s. It got serious in the 2010s, and in the 2020s, the sector exploded, so at what point could they have set guidelines for it?
I think it is a little too late.
I don't agree that it's too late. It's better to try to implement them now than not do it for the next 1000+ years. Considering how much longer AI would be in existence (which is as long as humans still exist), I don't think it's too late.
And the more understanding people and regulatory bodies have of AI, the more guidelines and regulations. From where I'm standing, I think AI is still relatively early.