AI and Corporate Governance: An Opportunity to Get It Right

The debate on artificial intelligence (AI) has largely focused on its transformative effects on organizations, management practices, and global power dynamics. Far less attention has been given to its implications for corporate governance and the functioning of boards beyond the now-familiar call for directors to become “AI literate” and for boards to benefit from “AI Assistance.” The authors argue that AI’s impact may be far deeper and more constructive. Rather than rendering boards obsolete, AI could finally enable them to fulfil their intended fiduciary role: exercising informed, independent, and accountable responsibility and oversight of the corporation. To support this claim, the authors review the enduring challenges to board effectiveness—spanning information, time, action, emotion, and spirit—and explore how AI can help address each. By narrowing information asymmetries, expanding attention between meetings, improving foresight, moderating group dynamics, and preserving institutional purpose, AI may usher in what the authors call a right-setting of corporate governance—perhaps even a long-awaited golden age of responsible and greatly more effective boards.