From data governance to AI governance: The CIO's new role

JF Gagne explains why the CIO is going to need a broader mandate in the company to better align their AI training and outcomes with business goals and compliance. This mandate should include an AI governance team that is well staffed and deeply established in the company, in order to catch biases that can develop from faulty goals or flawed data.

Chief information officers are the rulers of corporate data. They are responsible for picking the right data to process into information and then squeezing out meaning that will drive the business forward. Until now, they have done their job in a “command and control” paradigm. Their machines, no matter how sophisticated, could only do exactly what they are told. These systems couldn’t recognize patterns they weren’t specifically instructed to look for, leaving CIOs with limited freedom to automate decision making and instead investing their time into constantly updating their models. AI software is changing this thanks to its ability to independently identify unexpected patterns or changes in the data and update itself. The CIO’s new relationship with information systems will be more like a two-way conversation than a set of one-way commands. AI systems depend on enormous amounts of data, putting that much more importance on identifying gaps and filling them with quality, relevant data. For the CIO, this means the need for a stellar data governance policy on how that data is secured and cleaned on a large-scale basis. JF Gagne explains why the CIO is going to need a broader mandate in the company to better align their AI training and outcomes with business goals and compliance. This mandate should include an AI governance team that is well staffed and deeply established in the company, in order to catch biases that can develop from faulty goals or flawed data. Biases for faulty goals or flawed societal prejudices can build up very easily, and both the business and regulators will likely need transparency on how the model is performing.