Steps Toward AI Governance

EqualAI's 2024 artificial intelligence (AI) summit, cosponsored by RAND, was convened in Washington, D.C., to facilitate dialogue among corporate stakeholders from multiple industries, functions, and roles about AI development, acquisition, and integration. The purpose of the summit was to identify and align on common practices, discuss challenges, and share lessons learned in establishing and evaluating metrics in AI governance.

These conference proceedings describe key insights derived from summit discussions about best practices, metrics, and tools for evaluating the standards and performance of AI systems. The authors highlight two themes related to developing effective AI governance: (1) technical challenges, such as uncertainty about the rigor of external model evaluations and complications related to differing use cases and risk levels, and (2) organizational factors, such as how misaligned organizational goals create disincentives for investing in the implementation of appropriate AI processes and the crucial role that company culture plays in adopting and implementing AI governance standards. These conference proceedings are intended to help organizations foster a cohesive approach to AI governance.