7.2.1. Defining AI Governance
💡 First Principle: AI governance is the directing and controlling of an organization's AI use — ensuring it's responsible, ethical, transparent, accountable, and aligned with strategy and regulation.
AI governance is the system of directing and controlling an organization's use of artificial intelligence to ensure it is responsible, ethical, transparent, and aligned with organizational objectives and legal requirements. It addresses questions of accountability (who is responsible for AI decisions), transparency (can we explain what the AI did), risk (what could go wrong), and compliance (does this meet regulations) — applying the organization's governance discipline specifically to AI.
⚠️ Exam Trap: AI governance is about direction and control of AI use — responsibility, ethics, transparency, alignment — not about the technical performance of AI models. It's governance (Phase 5 sense) applied to AI.
Reflection Question: Why is "who is accountable for an AI's decision" a governance question rather than a technical one?
