Fewer than one in ten organisations across the Asia Pacific have the governance structures necessary to achieve trustworthy AI, according to a recent report co-developed by Deloitte Access Economics and Deloitte’s AI Institute.
The report, AI at a crossroads: building trust as the path to scale, seeks to shed light for business leaders regarding the development of effective AI governance as they traverse the road of technological advancements.
Deloitte says as organisations' AI adoption accelerates, there will also be an increase in challenges related to risk management. That is why it is important that the Finance function is ahead of its way in dealing with all possible outcomes.
Using their AI Governance Maturity Index, Deloitte classifies 91% of organisations as having ‘Basic’ or ‘In progress’ AI Governance structures in place, highlighting substantial room for improvement in AI governance, proving that organisations across Asia Pacific have the greatest opportunity for improvement in policies and principles as well as procedures and controls.
In contrast, Deloitte finds that organisations performed better in the organisational structure and monitoring and evaluation pillars, with more than 90% achieving at least ‘In Progress’ status.
Achieving a ‘Ready’ status for the AI Governance Maturity Index overall requires high performance across all five pillars. While nearly one in five organisations achieved a ‘Ready’ status in one of the pillars, only half that shared achieved ‘Ready’ for their AI governance overall. This highlights the need to consider AI governance in a holistic sense to develop the conditions required for trustworthy AI.
The Deloitte study is based on a survey of nearly 900 senior leaders across 13 countries in the Asia Pacific region, whose responses were assessed against Deloitte’s AI Governance Maturity Index to identify what good AI governance looks like in practice.
Good AI governance enables teams to adopt AI more effectively, build customer trust and creates paths for business to value and scale.
Other key findings from the report:
- Organisations with more mature AI governance frameworks report a 28% increase in staff using AI solutions and experience nearly 5% percent higher revenue growth
- 91% of organisations surveyed are categorised as having only ‘basic’ or ‘in progress’ governance structures, indicating a significant need for improvement in AI governance practices
- The most pressing concerns associated with AI usage are security vulnerabilities (86%), surveillance (83%), and privacy issues (83%)
- A quarter of organisations have experienced an increase of incidents (e.g. data breaches) related to AI in the past financial year, despite two in five organisations lacking a reporting mechanism for queries or incidents related to AI use in the workplace
- 45% of businesses say that enhanced AI governance has positively impacted their reputation among customers
- Only 58% of employees have the skills and capabilities to use AI responsibly
