The Inevitable AI Takeover: How C-Suite Roles and AI Governance Models are evolving as Healthcare becomes AI-Driven

This new risk AI poses has resulted in required changes to the roles and responsibilities across all levels of an organization, including at the c-suite and board levels. Kay Firth-Butterfield, head of AI and machine learning at the World Economic Forum (WEF), discusses how these roles are evolving alongside AI governance models to help ensure the ethical use of AI as a core function of the business. There is an emerging role we are seeing which is the position of the Chief AI Ethics Officer (CAIEO), or Chief AI Responsible Use Officer – whatever title you want to give them. When you appoint a CAIO to recreate your business using AI insights, you should also employ someone to look at the responsible use of AI at the same level. It is one thing to want all these great insights from AI to drive revenues from choosing the right way to sell to customers, for example, but it is a major problem when you don’t think about the responsible use of it.

You need your board to understand its oversight responsibilities, and then on the next layer down, you need the whole c-suite to understand how you are using AI. Therefore, you need a chief AI responsible officer because then you have somebody who can interact with all of these other people who are looking at the risk of using AI or algorithms. There seems to be a pressing need for governance around AI-based solutions and their use cases. Firstly, the board needs to understand that you are using AI and the ways in which you might be using it. The WEF has created a board toolkit to help members learn about their responsibility as far as AI is concerned. Secondly, the c-suite needs to be involved in discussions around how the company will utilize AI and how they will ensure its responsible use. In our work, we’ve concentrated on how to bring medical ethics together with responsible AI. There is one doctor for every 27,000 people in Rwanda, so they need to use AI to enhance their healthcare.