Here’s how artificial intelligence is changing boardrooms
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Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022 and the subsequent AI revolution, workers across industries have been affected by sweeping layoffs.
a new report published by IBM’s But last week showed that AI is also reshaping boardrooms and the way CEOs make decisions.
The report notes that 76 percent of the more than 2,000 organizations surveyed have established a new executive office (AI chief executive officer (CAIO)), compared to 26 percent in 2025.
Analysts and experts have expressed concern about the possibility of a workforce crisis arising from the proliferation of artificial intelligence in the corporate sphere.
“AI is driving the biggest organizational change since the industrial and digital revolutions,” McKinsey & Company partner Vivek Lath told CNBC.
The IBM report also found that AI is 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 increase.
blurred lines
As AI matures, the issue of its ownership in the boardroom has led to an increasingly confusing picture.
According to Lian Jye Su, principal analyst at market research firm Omdia, the current roster of technology-facing roles such as chief technology officer, chief information officer and chief data officer has often created uncertainty about AI responsibility at the executive level.
As challenges specific to AI adoption emerge—infrastructure, governance, integration, and workflow modernization issues—companies are increasingly establishing a dedicated office at the CAIO to oversee AI transformations, Su said.
This year only, organizations like HSBC And Lloyds Banking Group We took action to cast this role.
But estimates of how many companies appoint CAIOs vary widely.
“Have we seen AI chiefs? Yes. Do I expect this to become mainstream? No, probably not,” said Jonathan Tabah, a consulting director at the consulting firm. Gartner’sin question.
Organizations that appoint CAIOs “are choosing to be at the forefront of this innovation,” Tabah said, adding that creating new senior roles often carries significant costs that not every company can justify or afford.
IBM wrote in their report that CAIOs can “enable calculated risk-taking across the enterprise” and set clear AI transformation goals and guidelines that “allow teams to accelerate without getting out of control.”
Lath said McKinsey sees the responsibility of ensuring central coordination of AI efforts across a company as more important than establishing a specific title.
But the powers of offices like the CAIO often vary from organization to organization and often evolve over time, according to Randy Bean, an industry consultant and author of this book. 2026 Artificial Intelligence and Data Leadership Executive Benchmarking Survey.
The big question, according to Bean, is whether the emerging CAIO role will be “temporary” and transferred to other executive portfolios as AI transformations mature, or whether it will be more permanent.
human resources question
“The HR lead is in a unique position to influence talent management, acquisition and training processes within the organization,” Omdia’s Su said, adding that employee AI literacy is often a “significant hurdle” for many firms.
Similarly, in Bean’s 2026 AI and Data Leadership survey, 93.2% of respondents cited “cultural challenges” rather than technological limitations as the main barrier to AI adoption.
Analysts like Gartner’s Tabah see AI’s automation potential as a chance to push HR departments into more strategic roles. “This [an] Finally the opportunity to be relieved of the burden [HR departments] “We aim to stand out with operational work and become a strategic leader,” he said.
However, Tabah warned that the opposite is also possible. “If HR in your organization is not strategic and is predominantly an operational function, it will be pushed into a more operational function; it will become more automated.”
But what may be more noteworthy is how executives address the human impacts of AI-induced business disruptions.
“In the short term, I expect senior executive roles to face the least disruption… They are the ones most isolated from AI,” Tabah said. “That doesn’t mean they are absolved from the responsibility of knowing how to implement it or how to direct its implementation, but they will be insulated at best in terms of the impact on their immediate business.”
But senior roles often resist direct coding: tasks such as strategic assessments and stakeholder management are more difficult to outsource to AI algorithms.
“The other part of the answer [C-suite executives] Tabah stated that because they have the most control over where the AI impact will be felt, they have the most ability to protect themselves from disruption.
According to estimates, more than 101,000 tech workers have been laid off worldwide since the beginning of the year. layoffs.fyi. More than 20,000 layoffs were reported at companies such as Meta And Microsoft In April, analysts began to see these layoffs as a sign of things to come.
On Thursday, Bain & Company released a report estimating that software-as-a-service companies, some of the hardest hit by new AI capabilities, will generate nearly $100 billion in margin by “transforming labor costs into software expenses by automating coordination work.”
“We’re not suggesting there isn’t a workforce impact. I think we’re just saying the world doesn’t need another voice… we’re talking about it without giving context to the positive things that are being done, meaning more work is being done, people are being given the freedom to do other things,” management consultant David Crawford of Bain told CNBC.
