The AI Influence: For the Executive Suite

About This Book

The AI Influence, Volume 2: For the Executive Suite

I have never once seen a technology decision made on the technology.

It is made on whether the people at the table trust what they are being told. AI has made that harder. The claims are bigger, the evidence is thinner, and the vocabulary is unfamiliar enough that it is tempting to leave the judgment to the specialists. The specialist can tell you what the model does. Only you can decide whether the organization should let it.

This book is for the people who have to decide. It does not teach you to build AI. It teaches you what to ask, what a good answer looks like, and what it means when you do not get one.

The executive core is for every reader: what AI systems are and where they fail, how to judge an AI business case, how governance, risk and regulation apply, and how to lead people through the change. The remaining parts each take one seat in the executive suite and ask what AI changes in that office specifically:

Chief Executive Officer: competitive position, the board and investors, capital allocation, trust and reputation

Chief Financial Officer: AI in the finance function, controls and audit, valuing and funding AI, guidance and talent

Chief Operating Officer: operations and process redesign, supply chain and service, AI in production, the frontline workforce

Chief Technology Officer: architecture choices, engineering and MLOps, building AI into products safely

Chief Information Officer: AI across enterprise systems, the IT operating model, controlling enterprise AI use, modernization

Chief Human Resources Officer: workforce planning, AI in hiring and performance decisions, monitoring and privacy, people data

Chief Marketing Officer: customer insight, generative content and the brand, marketing law and consumer trust

Chief Information Security Officer: threats to AI systems, securing AI, attackers and defenders, incidents and disclosure

Chief Data Officer: data strategy, quality and readiness, data rights and sharing, leading the data organization

Chief Risk Officer: enterprise and model risk, third-party and concentration risk, the risk function and the board

General Counsel: legal obligations across jurisdictions, contracts and liability, intellectual property, AI in the legal function

Every chapter sets out the ideas, works through an example from an ordinary company with round numbers, lists the key terms and closes with a self-check. The self-check questions are the ones a board or a regulator might ask. If you cannot answer them for your own organization, that is the finding.

No vendors are named and no product is favored. On law and regulation the principle is stated behind each example, because the principle will outlast the statute.

Read the core, then your own part. The other parts repay reading too. The CFO who understands the CISO’s threat model, or the CHRO who understands the general counsel’s view of hiring tools, holds a stronger position at the table.

About the author. TJ Donnelly has spent more than 20 years as a business process and business systems analyst in banking, government and transit, preparing the analysis, requirements and business cases on which executives decide. He is the founder of Applied IT Solutions, a Toronto consultancy that helps organizations put AI to work on their documents, data and processes. Volume 1, For the Practitioner, addresses the people who do the work.