TheCorporateCounsel.net

Last week, Liz blogged about a recent NACD report on technology governance. I thought that an article in the most recent issue of The Boardroom Insider discussing the top AI trends that boards should keep in mind as they perform their oversight responsibilities might be a nice follow-up to that blog. The article follows up a roundtable discussion on this topic that included IBM CTO Khwaja Shaik and Gartner CFO Jackie Lyons. This excerpt highlights the need for boards to change the way they look at risk management of AI issues:

The board should refresh its views on risk management for AI projects. “Set up the governance of AI as a business risk rather than just an IT risk,” says Lyons. This will push management and the board to shape an overall AI integration and risk policy, rather than random AI trials throughout the company, where, as Shaik says “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.” Still, a good risk oversight policy should allow for plenty of AI innovation throughout the system. Bottom-up experiments and projects offer a far more productive ecosystem than top-down policies. Shaik says even large, established companies will need to take a more fatalistic, venture capital approach with AI projects. “Nine out of ten will fail, but the one that wins pays for all the rest.”

Other trends identified in the article include the need to appropriately identify the impact of AI energy consumption on a company’s stated ESG and carbon footprint goals and directors’ personal vulnerability to AI-enhanced spoofing or similar scams.

– John Jenkins