Good data about how companies are implementing AI governance programs is essential both for organizations to benchmark their efforts, and for observers to understand the state of development. In this episode, Katie Fowler, Director of Responsible Business at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, joins Kevin Werbach to discuss the findings of Responsible AI in Practice, a new report drawing on a global dataset of roughly 3,000 companies across 13 sectors.

Fowler unpacks the report's central finding: an enormous gap between corporate AI ambition and operational governance, with 44 percent of companies reporting an AI strategy but only 13 percent publicly committing to a formal governance framework. She argues that the gap is structural rather than just a disclosure failure, noting that AI expertise often sits deep within technical teams rather than at the leadership levels responsible for organization-wide rollout. She points to striking regional variation in workforce protections, the EU AI Act's emergence as a de facto global reference framework even outside Europe, and pushes back on the narrative that regulation stifles innovation. Looking forward, she discusses how investors are using transparency as a proxy for risk management in the absence of mature responsible AI metrics, and outlines the long-term vision of building a dataset robust enough to support a responsible AI index tied to financial materiality.

Katie Fowler is Director of Responsible Business at the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the independent charity affiliated with Thomson Reuters. She leads initiatives including the Workforce Disclosure Initiative (a global platform collecting survey data on how companies treat workers across their direct operations and supply chains) and the AI Company Data Initiative, launched in partnership with UNESCO. Before joining the Foundation, Fowler held leadership roles at The Social Innovation Partnership and Chance for Childhood.

Transcript

Responsible AI in Practice: 2025 Global Insights from the AI Company Data Initiative

Why a Companywide Effort Is Key to Responsible and Trustworthy AI Adoption (Katie Fowler, techUK guest blog, 2025)