Business leaders review AI governance, oversight, and compliance requirements as enterprise adoption grows.
Artificial intelligence is becoming part of more business operations, but the governance needed to support it is developing at a slower pace.
Several recent studies point to the same trend. Organizations continue investing in AI and expanding its use, while governance programs remain in earlier stages of development.
A report from Schellman found that fewer than one in five organizations have reached a mature level of AI governance. At the same time, most respondents said they expect their use of AI to increase over the next year, placing greater attention on the policies, oversight, and accountability that support those deployments.
The findings align with separate research from the IBM Institute for Business Value. In its survey of 2,000 technology executives across 33 countries, 70% said AI is being deployed across their organizations faster than IT teams can track it, while only 11% said they feel fully prepared for the scale of AI agent deployments expected over the next year.
The IBM study also found that two-thirds of CIOs and CTOs are accountable for AI systems they do not fully control. As organizations adopt AI across more business functions, responsibility is extending beyond the teams responsible for implementing the technology.
Preparing for AI regulation is becoming part of that effort. A majority of organizations surveyed said they are preparing to comply with emerging AI regulations in the United States, while nearly one-third reported they are preparing for the European Union’s AI Act.
AI governance extends beyond approving a new technology or publishing a policy. It includes defining who is responsible for AI systems, determining what data they can access, documenting acceptable use, monitoring how they operate, and establishing processes for responding when problems occur.
Although the studies approached the topic from different perspectives, they reached a similar conclusion. AI adoption continues to accelerate, while AI governance is still developing across a large portion of the organizations surveyed.
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