One of the most consequential challenges confronting corporate governance in the near term will be its ability to exercise informed oversight over the application of artificial intelligence (AI) within its organization. It will be a challenge that will arise regardless of the industry sector in which the company operates, and regardless of how it applies AI in that operation.
The essence of the challenge is the rapidly emerging conflict between the perceived societal and commercial benefits arising from AI implementation, and the perceived societal and institutional risks arising from its use. The need to address the challenge is urgent; the competing interests of benefit and risk are hurtling at each other at hypersonic speed.
While the challenge is certain to arise at some point at the government/regulatory level, it is likely to arise more immediately at the corporate, operational level. And the governing board, with its strategic and risk management portfolios, is the most appropriate platform from which companies may resolve the challenge for the benefit of all corporate constituencies.
Nowhere is this risk/benefit conflict better demonstrated than in the health care sector, which is widely acknowledged for leveraging research and innovation to achieve advances and efficiencies in patient care and treatment.
The articlee was originally posted at Forbes.
The Boston Global Forum (BGF), in collaboration with the United Nations Centennial Initiative, released a major work entitled Remaking the World – Toward an Age of Global Enlightenment. More than twenty distinguished leaders, scholars, analysts, and thinkers put forth unprecedented approaches to the challenges before us. These include President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, Governor Michael Dukakis, Father of Internet Vint Cerf, Former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Harvard University Professors Joseph Nye and Thomas Patterson, MIT Professors Nazli Choucri and Alex ‘Sandy’ Pentland, and Vice President of European Parliament Eva Kaili. The BGF introduced core concepts shaping pathbreaking international initiatives, notably, the Social Contract for the AI Age, an AI International Accord, the Global Alliance for Digital Governance, the AI World Society (AIWS) Ecosystem, and AIWS City.
