How Forward-Thinking Boards Are Using AI
- Impact Boards EM
- 9 hours ago
- 1 min read
Still too few directors recognise AI’s potential to improve preparation, discussion and decision-making in the boardroom. But this may soon change.
In 2014, venture capital firm Deep Knowledge Ventures appointed an algorithm to its board, with full voting power on investment decisions. Though it had a seat at the table, the algorithm was really just a faster data analyst, churning out recommendations for human directors to weigh. A decade on, machine learning has made huge leaps. Yet our research suggests most directors still view AI as peripheral to their work.
From June to September 2024, Prof Shekshnia and Prof Yakubovich spoke with more than 50 board chairs, vice chairs and committee heads from global companies including ASM, Lazard, Nestlé, Novo Nordisk and Shell. While some had used AI for personal tasks, very few had integrated it into their boardroom responsibilities.
Still, a small group described promising use cases, from prepping for meetings with large language models (LLMs) to testing assumptions mid-discussion. As published in a Harvard Business Review article, these examples may be early signals of a broader shift.
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