Bot in boardrooms, get AI incorporated

Logitech CEO Hanneke Faber has set the AI cat among boardroom pigeons. She says she'd welcome a bot member in every board meeting to stay ahead in the productivity curve. AI agents are embedding themselves across business functions, and it is a matter of time before they show up on company boards with their unbeatable data-driven analytical capabilities. Bots have access to real-time business processes on a scale impossible to reach by humans. Board decisions made on inputs by AI agents will be vastly superior, as will their execution through digital agents. Faber is correct. Bring AI on board - but do it with circumspection.

Boardrooms exist not only to maximise corporate profits but also to ensure they are made ethically. Corporate governance will have to remain entirely in the domain of humans given AI's shortcomings. Culture and emotions drive corporate growth alongside business strategy. The middle ground would be for boardrooms to power themselves up through AI bots and then turn the decision-making over to directors for the human touch. Conflict resolution between digital and human inputs would necessarily have to be guided by value judgement. Boardrooms by design are good at asking ethical questions. They would get better at it if the questions became granular through the introduction of AI-driven business strategies.

Corporate boards that use augmented intelligence are likely to improve productivity without losing agency over governance. The composition of future boardrooms will be vital to achieving the right balance between artificial and natural intelligence. Boards guide corporate engagement with the external environment, and the pace of incorporating AI-driven decisions will be influenced by technology dispersal. Business, however, is expected to push societal adoption of AI and will have to work out the place for bots in decision-making. Humans will have to be in the loop at almost every stage of AI implementation to be able to retain context for intervention. Behind every R2D2, there must be a Luke Skywalker.