Nine Years, One Number

Nine Years One Number0:00/662.4481×Last year, I undertook a piece of research for what became Governing Digital with Courage and Clarity, a report on how directors should oversee AI, data, and the broader digital portfolio at the board table. The methodology was unremarkable. I interviewed chief executives, non-executive directors, and AI consultants across across a range of sectors. Most spoke on the record. Ed Santow—Co-Director of the UTS Human Technology Institute and a member of the Australian Government's AI Expert Group—was characteristically generous with his time and characteristically clear in his assessment, as were a number of others who saw the landscape accurately and were happy to be named. A handful of contributors, however, spoke only on the condition of anonymity.This is common enough in research. People who are about to expose an inconvenient truth often want some distance from the consequences of having exposed it. What was unusual on this occasion was that the…