At a board briefing, a director from a financial institution asked me a simple question - what do I actually need to know? I don’t think I answered that question well.
First, I did not have a clean answer to point him to. There has been plenty written for boards in general. I could answer his questions with what was in these publications, but that would not have been totally correct for finance. Second, answering it in detail takes a bit more than can be contained in a simple answer.
The Singapore Institute of Directors also put out its AI Guide for Boards in Singapore recently - a broad and generous map of the whole AI question a board faces. Strategy, value, talent, resilience, governance. Not a bad place to start.
What it said is generally applicable. But the financial sector’s risk management discipline, built over decades and paid for in real losses, has its own demands.
When the SID guide does reach into the financial sector, it reaches for the FEAT principles - Fairness, Ethics, Accountability, Transparency. Good principles. But principles are all they are. They tell you what a good outcome looks like. Not how to get there.
I had a hand in Singapore’s first set of AI risk management guidelines for the financial sector - the MAS AI Risk Management Guidelines (AIRG).
As the SID guide did not mention the AIRG, I decided to try to use this opportunity to answer the director’s question the way I know best - written, and through a financial-sector lens. This book uses the SID guide as a starting point (no point re-inventing the wheel), and connects it to the AIRG.
It is deliberately boring.
It starts with the five core areas in the AIRG that a board has to be responsible for, and the 5 questions I had shared with the board.
And then I go deeper.
It is just a start. So no matter how this got into your hands, feel free to pass it on.
The last page tells you how to reach me if you would like to argue with me. Tell me where I am wrong. I would like to learn more on this.
Just subscribe for free to my Substack to get access to the full ebook. Details in the email when you subscribe.
#AIRiskManagement #AIGovernance #AIBoards
Excerpt below.
hello Gary! How may your existing subscribers access this ebook please?