AI Governance Boards: Do You Need One?

For the first two years of the AI boom, the question was "How do we enable this?" Now, the question is "How do we control this?"

Mid-market companies are increasingly establishing AI Governance Boards.

What is an AI Governance Board?

It is not a "No" committee. It is a cross-functional team (IT, Legal, Ops, HR) that meets quarterly to review:

1. New Use Cases: "Sales wants to use an agent to auto-reply to inbound leads. Is that safe?"
2. Vendor Risk: "Our CRM just added AI features. Do they train on our data?"
3. Ethical Impact: "Are we inadvertently biasing our hiring process with this resume screener?"

The "Shadow AI" Problem

Without a formal review process, employees will use tools in the shadows.

• Your marketing manager is using a personal ChatGPT account to edit press releases.
• Your dev team is pasting code into an unvetted LLM.

A Governance Board provides a "paved road": a safe, approved way to experiment.

Getting Started

Don't overcomplicate it.

• Charter: Define the scope (safety + enablement).
• Members: 3-5 people max.
• Cadence: Monthly at first, then quarterly.

If you don't govern it, it will govern you.