Dive Brief:
- Despite widespread AI use among enterprises, there’s no consensus around a model for clear ownership of the technology, a Thoughtworks survey published Wednesday found. The tech consultancy surveyed 3,200 CIOs globally in July.
- The report shows that after the CEO, central IT teams, executive leadership and those in dedicated AI roles have the most influence over AI-related decisions, and the same is true for budgets.
- Although decision-making is split, the report shows 94% of U.S. CIOs said their team would be held responsible for security breaches or compliance failures triggered by AI tools deployed by other business units.
Dive Insight:
Ownership of AI deployment and spending is divided across organizations, with no single dominant budget model, the Thoughtworks report found. But CIOs report feeling personal responsibility to manage the technology’s outcomes, and bear the brunt of the blame for mistakes.
Nearly all tech executives say they have full or high visibility into the AI tools in use across business units, but visibility doesn’t necessarily translate into accountability, the report found. AI performance weighs heavily on tech executives — 61% reported they feared losing their job if they failed to lead their organization through an AI transition, AI platform Writer found earlier this year.
Organizations should probe their AI ownership models to ensure the people making decisions about AI have the authority and information they need, Thomas Squeo, CTO of Thoughtworks Americas, told CIO Dive in an email.
Because of distributed ownership of AI, more than half of CIOs are planning to embed technology leads into business units, the Thoughtworks report found. Just under half said they are planning to expand the CIO role to oversee enterprise AI strategy and implementation.
Most CIOs said their organization was well prepared to govern AI, but 88% said adoption is still moving faster than governance.
Organizations should assign security, privacy and compliance to relevant control owners throughout the business, according to Thoughtworks’ research.
“Changes to roles and workflows involve people, business and technology leaders together,” Squeo said. “Finance gets visibility into consumption and value, and business units make local decisions within agreed guardrails.”
But there is no one ideal model of AI ownership for every organization, Squeo said. He suggested CIOs make AI adoption repeatable across the enterprise with a shared technology environment that has streamlined architecture and controls, so that they don’t have to approve every single AI use case.
“I see the CIO as the person connecting local adoption to enterprise scale,” Squeo said. “Making sure what works in one part of the business can grow without losing the architecture and controls that made it reliable.”
