A recent iStart article described AI complacency as a growing risk for New Zealand organisations. Ethos Advisory’s observations from AI governance reviews were referenced in the piece.
The research it draws on names the problem complacency. Reading it as a governance question, I am not sure that is the right construct.
Complacency describes an attitude. Governance is concerned with decisions.
Boards cannot govern whether people feel complacent. They can govern the quality of the evidence on which confidence is based.
That is a very different question.
When directors ask, “Are we managing AI well?”, what evidence sits behind the answer?
Do we know where AI is being used?
Do we understand which decisions are influenced by it?
Have we agreed who is accountable when something goes wrong?
Are we monitoring whether today’s controls are still appropriate as capability changes?
Those are governance questions. They sit at a different altitude from the individual judgement the research examines, and they are the ones a board can actually act on.
The boards that govern AI well, in my experience, are not the ones most worried about it. They are the ones disciplined about asking for evidence before accepting reassurance.
Perhaps the opposite of AI complacency is not vigilance.
Perhaps it is confidence grounded in evidence.