Good morning. Would you add an AI to your company’s board? Yes, the idea sounds crazy. Then again, what would you think about a board member with perfect recall, exemplary computation skills, and the ability to dig into data and ask hard questions? Starts to sound not so crazy after all. And at least one CEO who spoke at the Fortune Most Powerful Women summit, which wrapped up in D.C. yesterday, says she’s open to it.
Hanneke Faber, CEO of global tech manufacturing company Logitech, says she’d entertain the idea of an AI joining her board, as my colleague Sydney Lake reported. “We already use [AI agents] in almost every meeting,” Faber told the audience. She said that while AI agents (in her case Microsoft Copilot as well as internal bots), are currently summarizing and notetaking and idea generating, things are progressing fast. “As they evolve — and some of the best agents or assistants that we’ve built actually do things themselves — that comes with a whole bunch of governance things,” Faber said. “You have to keep in mind and make sure you really want that bot to take action. But if you don’t have an AI agent in every meeting, you’re missing out on some of the productivity.”
Reshema Kemps-Polanco, executive vice president and chief commercial officer at global pharmaceutical company Novartis, also said she’s been training an AI bot to help run a “very rigorous commercial launch.” The bot is being trained to assess the team’s launch plan, and is getting “smarter and smarter” about asking strategic questions, she said. “It’s trained to look for gaps in the plan,” said Kemps-Polanco during a session titled “Dissecting the Global Economy,” which was presented by Novartis.
Of course, the idea of having an AI board member opens up a host of thorny ethical issues. What would happen if the AI recommended a strategy that goes south? Or relies on biased data to make a decision? However, given that the average director of an S&P 500 company made $336,352 in total compensation last year according to Spencer Stuart, adding a bot to a board may be a better deal than you think. — Lee Clifford
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]
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CEO Daily is compiled and edited by Joey Abrams and Jim Edwards.
