Getting the Board Onside with AI Governance

Simon Kriss is Chief AI Officer at simonkriss.ai and a CX and AI futurologist who works with company boards and C-suite executives. His aim is to help them understand where the AI opportunities lie for their businesses, and how they can get started with effective and ethical AI adoption. His talk focuses on helping boards meaningfully engage with AI governance by shifting their mindset before introducing skill sets and toolsets. Simon highlights that many board directors either see AI as irrelevant to their remit or, conversely, become fixated on technical minutiae. This confusion often stems from skipping straight to “how do we do it?” without first addressing “why” and “what.” Drawing parallels with climate change, he argues that boards intellectually acknowledge AI’s presence but struggle to believe in its practical value. Recent ADAPT research supports this, showing that 87% of CIOs report their AI initiatives have yet to deliver expected…