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IAPP-EY Professionalizing Organizational AI Governance Report

Executive Summary

This report on organizational AI governance focuses on the internal guidelines and practices organizations follow to ensure responsible development, deployment or use of AI. The full report, available only to IAPP members, can be accessed here.

Published: December 2023

Contributors:

Brandon LaLonde

Saz Kanthasamy

The growth and proliferation of AI technology is enormous.

Open any newspaper, navigate to the homepage of any media website, turn the TV to any channel and you are likely to stumble into the vibrant debate concerning AI and the efficacy, ethicality and safety of its implementation. The growth and proliferation of AI technology is enormous. Market research shows the AI market size has doubled since 2021 and is expected grow from around USD2 billion in 2023 to nearly USD2 trillion in 2030. Organizations are responding in kind. As well as working to utilize and harness AI, they are prioritizing efforts to govern the design, development and deployment of AI.

In the IAPP-EY Annual Privacy Governance Report 2022, AI governance averaged as the ninth most important strategic priority for privacy functions. In 2023, it is the second. AI's rocket to the top of the list should not come as a surprise, given 57% of privacy functions have acquired additional responsibility for AI governance.

In the spring of 2023, we asked our global membership to complete a 43-question survey focused on the governance of privacy and also on the governance of AI. Over the course of five weeks, from May to July, we received more than 500 responses from over 50 countries. We published the IAPP-EY Privacy Governance Report 2023 in November but the respondent data on AI governance was so rich and voluminous, we decided to publish this separate, dedicated report on organizational AI governance. Here, organizational AI governance refers to the internal guidelines and practices organizations follow to ensure responsible development, deployment or use of AI by that organization. Such governance is likely to be just as important as the specific governance of the components of the algorithm itself, such as training data, the model and the parameters at the input, process and output stages. To compliment the report, the IAPP published an at-a-glance infographic that presents key data points, which can be accessed here.

You are reading the Executive Summary of the IAPP-EY Professionalizing Organizational AI Governance Report. The full report, available only to IAPP members, can be accessed here.

For many, the risks and promises of AI remain elusive with the absence of comprehensive global regulations to truly govern this innovative technology. Of survey respondents, 56% indicated they believe their organization does not understand the benefits and risks of AI deployment. However, for the 60% of respondents who indicated their organization already established a dedicated AI governance function or will likely establish one in the next 12 months, the rapidly changing nature of AI has created, and will continue to create, professional challenges in cohering to, coordinating with and actioning the complex technical and regulatory ecosystem of AI.

Despite the shifting technological and regulatory landscape, there is an understanding that AI is governable. This report shows organizations are already taking steps to govern AI, from specified staffing to long-term strategic planning. Not only that, but it shows the extent to which this is happening across organization types and across the world. Importantly, it also reveals how organizations are doing so, to what end and up against which obstacles.

Top uses of AI of those using it

Although research shows there are synergies between the skills AI governance professionals will need and the skills of privacy professionals, there is a recognized need for the professionalization of AI governance as its own domain. According to the IAPP-FTI Privacy and AI Governance Report 2023, more than 50% of respondents designing AI governance approaches are building on top of privacy programs and more than 40% are using existing privacy assessments to manage AI risk. Of survey respondents, 33% cited a lack of professional training and certification for AI governance professionals and 31% cited a complete lack of qualified AI governance professionals as key challenges to the effective roll-out and operation of AI governance programs. The time to professionalize AI governance is now.

What's in the full report?

The full report, which is only available to IAPP members, contains parts covering the below topics:

Additional resources