CIOs say AI is outpacing governance, Thoughtworks finds

Thoughtworks has published a global survey showing that 88% of Chief Information Officers believe AI adoption is moving faster than governance models can keep up. The study covered 3,200 CIOs across 10 countries.

The findings suggest a widening gap between responsibility and control as companies roll out AI tools across their businesses. Nearly nine in 10 CIOs said they are held responsible for AI failures linked to tools adopted independently across their organisations, even though ownership of AI budgets is split between IT, business units and senior leadership teams.

One clear shift is in the CIO role itself. Globally, 89% of respondents said they are now more responsible for redesigning workforce workflows and labour models than for managing core IT infrastructure. In the UK, that rose to 92%.

More than a third of CIOs also said they feel personally accountable for workforce disruption caused by AI adoption, despite lacking full influence over the outcome. Respondents also reported personal accountability for security incidents involving AI systems, data privacy breaches, and brand or reputational damage caused by AI misuse.

In the UK, the pressure took a slightly different form. Some 35% of CIOs said they were concerned about regulatory or compliance failures tied to AI, while 34% were focused on proving a clear return on AI investment.

Budget split

The data suggests there is no single model for controlling AI spending. Among those surveyed, 22% said AI budgets are managed centrally by IT, while another 22% said responsibility is shared between IT and the business. A further 20% said budgets are controlled independently by business units, 19% said they sit at executive or board level, and 17% said the model is still evolving.

That spread may help explain why many CIOs feel answerable for outcomes they do not fully control. As AI buying and deployment spread across organisations, governance structures have not kept pace with the speed of adoption, the findings suggest.

Rachel Laycock, Chief Technology Officer at Thoughtworks, said the issue extends beyond technical oversight. "AI governance is also a workforce design issue. As AI changes how work gets done, organisations need to rethink roles, workflows and decision rights so people know where human judgment is still essential and where AI can take on more of the work."

Leadership model

The research also examined the rise of the Chief AI Officer role. Globally, 70% of organisations surveyed said they had already hired a Chief AI Officer, while a further 26% said they were looking to do so.

Even so, there was little agreement on how that role should work with the CIO. Some 35% said the Chief AI Officer operates independently with equal or greater enterprise influence, while 29% described the relationship between the CIO and CAIO as a source of organisational friction or unclear boundaries.

In the UK, adoption of the CAIO role was lower than the global figure. Just 63% of organisations said they had hired a Chief AI Officer, and among those that had, 34% said the relationship with the CIO involved friction or unclear lines of responsibility.

Mike Sutcliff, Chief Executive Officer at Thoughtworks, said the problem cannot be solved simply by recentralising authority. "Authority over AI is distributed, but accountability hasn't always moved with it. The answer isn't to pull every decision back into central IT, or to put one executive in charge and assume the problem is solved. Organisations need clearer decision rights, and people need the skills and information to make good decisions as AI becomes part of how the business runs."

The results indicate that many companies are still working out how to govern AI consistently as deployment spreads across departments. Without a dominant structure for oversight, budgets and leadership, CIOs are left carrying responsibility for operational, compliance and workforce risks even when formal authority sits elsewhere.

Xia Jie Jessie, Chief Information Officer at Thoughtworks, said collaboration across leadership roles matters more than a single owner. "At Thoughtworks, our experience has been that AI transformation is a team sport, from defining enterprise AI strategy and architecture to embedding AI into internal platforms and day-to-day operations. The question isn't who owns AI, but how leadership collaborates to create business value responsibly and at scale."