AI in focus: strengthening board and audit committee oversight

This episode is part of our webcast series, Better Questions for Boards, designed to provide directors with insights and questions to consider as they engage with management on a variety of complex boardroom issues.

This 60-minute webcast from April 2026 provides perspectives from leading technologists and board directors on emerging AI practices, risks and governance approaches. Leading institutional investors also share their key priorities for 2026, including expectations for board and audit committee oversight of AI. Agenda topics include:

• AI developments shaping 2026: What’s changing fast - and how leaders are adapting growth strategies, scaling and transforming their organizations with AI to drive results and efficiency.
• Workforce and culture implications: How sectors are preparing people, policies and talent strategies for near-term and long-term AI impact.
• Risk priorities: Practical approaches to reputational, quality, and liability risks - including red teaming and third party assessments.
• Strengthening board/committee oversight: Emerging practices for structuring AI oversight, accelerating board learning and clarifying accountability.
• Investor expectations, decoded: Top-of-mind investor priorities, including what major investors want to see from boards and audit committees on AI oversight - and how they’re using AI in stewardship.

The discussion is co-moderated by Lee Henderson, Partner, Ernst & Young LLP and Jennifer Lee, Managing Director, Ernst & Young LLP.

Panelists

• Traci Gusher, EY Americas AI and Data Leader, Ernst & Young LLP
• Sastry Durvasula, Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer, Information and Digital Officer, TIAA
• Nora Denzel, Board member at Advanced Micro Devices, Sony Group and Gen Digital
• Priyanka Singh, Sustainability Analyst, Fidelity Investments
• John Roe, Global Co-Head, BlackRock Investment Stewardship, BlackRock

Key takeaways

• The race for AI value is accelerating as initial pilots move to enterprise scale. Leading companies are shifting from value optimization (incremental productivity gains and process improvement) to value creation (new products, services and business models). That can mean unlocking net-new revenue streams from areas that were not previously viewed as adjacencies. Getting it right will require explicit alignment between AI strategy and corporate strategy.
• Some of the key risks that directors are focused on revolve around data (privacy, integrity and intellectual property (IP)) and the evolving liability exposure of agentic AI. Oversight of AI will continue to evolve, including emerging issues and considerations around the challenges posed by auditing agents and fully characterizing the risks they introduce.
• The traditional workforce is changing as AI agents become members of the workforce. They are issued IDs in enterprise systems and perform actions the way humans do. Companies need a clear model for how agents will be managed, monitored and governed. They need to upskill employees who will work with and oversee agents and foster a cultural change to enable these new ways of working. Talent-aware boards are additionally focusing on what skills will be critical to the company three to five years out, as well as overseeing continuous capacity planning, redeployments, upskilling and reskilling and clear employee communications.
• Accountability over AI must be clearly aligned with the executive committee to confirm that AI strategy is driven across the enterprise — not held within IT as a standalone project. Executive teams should have goals and performance metrics tied to the strategic AI goals of the organization. Boards also want business unit leaders (not only the chief information officer (CIO) or chief technology officer (CTO) to present to the board on how end-to-end processes have been reinvented and how that translates into top-line growth.
• Investors want a clear view of how AI is impacting the company, including how central AI is to the company’s business model today, how that may evolve and the strategic implications of getting AI right or wrong. They also want to understand how the company is considering AI-related risks and how the board is equipping itself to provide adequate oversight commensurate with the risks and opportunities the company faces. They are looking for governance maturity, a strong AI risk management framework, robust ethical guardrails and clear lines of accountability over AI.
• Investors are using AI to broaden and deepen their research, including mining annual reports and financial statements (including footnotes) and scraping unstructured data signals such as job postings and employee reviews. Proxy voting, however, remains a human decision, where human judgment is still vital.

What we heard from the audience

• When asked about the impact of AI on the business in the next 12 months, one-third of the audience said they are most concerned about the inability to deploy AI at a competitive pace. They also flagged cybersecurity exposure and inadequate governance and accountability as concerns.
• Nearly half (45%) of board respondents said that their audit committee has adjusted the committee charter in the past 12 months to reflect additional oversight responsibilities relating to AI. Another 28% said that changes are being contemplated.
• About 40% of boards have engaged with external AI specialists in the past 12 months. Another quarter say they are contemplating doing so.