Chertoff Group Executive Chairman and Co-Founder Michael Chertoff participated in a conversation about the rapidly evolving topic of AI that took place at MLR Media’s 2024 Character of the Corporation conference late last year.
The discussion also included Samantha Kappagoda, director and nominating chair, Credit Suisse Funds; Valerie Mosley, director, DraftKings. John Bremen, managing director, WTW, served as moderator.
What advice do you have for board members on what they should pay attention to, where they should get their information and how they should approach governance on this quickly changing topic?
CHERTOFF: At one of the boards I currently chair, we have a session periodically — an hour or two hours, maybe on Saturdays offsite — with the board where we brief them generally about developments in AI, not at a very technical level, but at a high altitude level. Because the truth is the phrase means different things to different people and it’s very important to make sure we’re all speaking the same language.
So, occasional refresher courses as well as sharing around material when there’s a new development is the baseline preparation. And then as was said, it depends an awful lot on the business you’re in. If you’re in the finance business, you’re going to be using AI and interacting with it much differently than if you’re in the shipping business or in a hotel business. Understanding the ways in which AI might be helpful and also problematic is something that should be part of the curriculum for what we periodically do to educate the board and make sure directors are being kept current on new developments.
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