Companies spent 2025 racing to adopt artificial intelligence (AI). The data shows that AI did not just create new risks; it also acted as a high-speed searchlight, exposing the infrastructure gaps many organizations have carried since the late 1990s. Now, we are closing an era of deferred maintenance.
Why Act Now?
Many of you are facing risk now. Your board is asking about AI risk. Your engineers are deploying models faster than Legal can review them. Your vendor contracts do not address who owns training data. And regulators are watching. The recent executive order establishing a national AI policy framework signals that
heightened regulatory and enforcement may heat up, even if a preemption battle ensues.
Stakeholders, regulators, and boards now expect visible, defensible action. Building a robust governance framework takes time, so organizations that begin now will be better positioned to meet future requirements. Notably, under California’s new mandatory risk framework, AI risk assessment is a required component of enterprise risk assessment, with a compliance deadline of December 31, 2027.
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