Here’s how artificial intelligence is changing boardrooms

By Finance News On May 11, 2026

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Since the debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and the subsequent AI revolution, workers across industries have been hit by sweeping layoffs.

A new report published by IBM last week, however, shows that AI is also reshaping boardrooms and how CEOs make decisions.

The report says 76% of the more than 2,000 organizations surveyed have established a new executive office — that of the chief AI officer (CAIO) — up from 26% in 2025.

Analysts and experts have expressed concerns over the possibility of a labor crisis arising from the proliferation of AI across the corporate sphere.

“AI is driving what may be the largest organizational shift since the industrial and digital revolutions,” Vivek Lath, partner at McKinsey & Company, told CNBC.

The IBM report also found that AI was deepening the influence of one of the C-suite’s most established portfolios, with 59% of respondents expecting the influence of the chief human resources officer (CHRO) to grow.

Blurred lines

As AI has matured, the question of its ownership in the boardroom has led to an increasingly confusing picture.

The existing roster of tech-facing roles, like the chief technology officer, chief information officer and chief data officer, has often introduced ambiguity over AI responsibility at the executive level, according to Lian Jye Su, chief analyst from market research firm Omdia.

So with the emergence of challenges specific to AI adoption — questions of infrastructure, governance, integration, and workflow modernization — firms have increasingly begun establishing a dedicated office in the CAIO to oversee AI transformations, Su said.

This year alone, organizations like HSBC and Lloyds Banking Group have made the move to staff the role.

But estimates of how many companies are appointing CAIOs vary widely.

“Have we seen chief AI officers? Yes. Do I expect that to go mainstream? No, probably not,” Jonathan Tabah, an advisory director at consultancy firm Gartner, said.

Organizations that have appointed CAIOs have “chosen to be at the forefront of this innovation,” Tabah said, adding that creating new C-suite roles often carries significant costs, ones that not every company can justify or afford.

But the emergence of the CAIO role, according to Hans Dekkers, IBM’s Asia Pacific general manager, reflects a sense that “AI is no longer just a technology initiative.”

“While the CIO, CTO, and Chief Data Officer each play critical roles in technology, innovation, infrastructure, and data management, the CAIO’s remit is focused on how AI is applied across the enterprise to change how work, decisions, and execution happen,” he said.

IBM wrote in their report that CAIOs can “enable calculated risk-taking across the organization,” while setting clear AI transformation targets and guidelines that “let teams accelerate without spinning out of control.”

McKinsey sees the responsibility of ensuring centralized coordination of AI efforts across a company as being more…