94% companies will keep spending on AI even when it fails
Somewhere on the 40th floor of a building you would recognize, a room full of people who could not create an email account without calling someone from IT is making the largest capital allocation decisions in the history of American business.
They are the board of directors, the people with fiduciary authority and a median age of 63+, the ones who vote on strategy and sign off on budgets whilst deciding the fate of hundreds if not thousands of workers.
The Conference Board's April 2026 report on AI governance found what anyone paying attention to this depressing (but vital) area already suspected: 83% of S&P 500 boards have identified artificial intelligence as a material risk, but only 2.7% of the directors sitting on those boards have any disclosed AI expertise.
It's essentially saying 83% of directors raised the alarm but only 2.7% could read the instrument panel to tackle the issue. This 30x canyon between those numbers is where $725 billion in spending decisions is being made and by their own admission, by the people least equipped in their own organizations to make them.
That 2.7% was 1.5% in 2021, so the expert bench has nearly doubled, which sounds encouraging until you picture what doubling actually looks like which is something like: having 2 buckets of water instead of one to tackle a 10 story fire.
Deloitte's Global Boardroom Program survey found 2 out of 3 board members reporting "limited to no knowledge or experience" with AI. Harvard Law School data found only 13% of S&P 500 companies have any directors with AI expertise on their boards at all. The companies employ 1000s of people who know this technology pretty darn well yet none of those people are sitting at the table where the money gets approved.