Research with Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School

How leading companies govern AI in practice

An interview series with the people responsible for AI governance inside leading companies, and with leaders of civil society, non-profit and public-sector organisations whose work relates to or is affected by AI. We want to understand the working reality: how decisions are actually made, who owns them, and where the people who build AI, and those it is deployed on, have a say.

The study

Three questions in every conversation

  1. How is AI governance managed? Who owns it day to day, who owns it ultimately, and what structures exist: review boards, councils, red lines, written policies.
  2. How does ethics reach the agenda? What made AI governance a real priority, and how decisions are made when ethical concerns and commercial goals pull in different directions.
  3. What role do employees play? Whether, and how, the people who develop AI and the workers who use it or are subject to it can intervene. This is the question that ties the study to our work on worker voice.

What comes out of it

A map of how the industry governs AI

A review paper mapping the main strategies used across the industry: a resource for researchers, practitioners and policymakers alike.

Who we speak to

Companies that build AI, and those that use it

Companies whose core business is building AI models, companies that build them alongside other work, and companies in other sectors that use AI across their operations, as well as civil society and non-profit organisations.

Who we are

The research team

  • Julie Battilana

    Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School, and Alan L. Gleitsman Professor of Social Innovation, Harvard Kennedy School

  • Lakshmi Ramarajan

    Diane Doerge Wilson Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

  • Isabelle Ferreras

    FNRS-UCLouvain and Harvard Law School; Distinguished research fellow of the Institute for Ethics in AI, University of Oxford

  • Leszek Krol

    Research Associate, Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School

  • Vera Alexandrov

    Research Associate, Harvard Business School, Social Innovation + Change Initiative

  • Gabriel Levie

    Project lead, Democratic Intelligence

  • Samuel Verboomen

    Democratic Intelligence

Harvard Business SchoolUCLouvainFNRS

Taking part

You lead AI governance, AI ethics or AI adoption in your organisation

Taking part is a single one-hour conversation over Zoom, at a time that suits you, recorded and transcribed with your consent. What you say stays confidential, you need prepare nothing, and you may decline any question.

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