AI in the Boardroom - Who Owns the Algorithm When It Goes Wrong

Introduction

Artificial intelligence has moved out of the IT department and into the decisions that matter: who gets hired, who gets credit, what customers are told, how risks are priced and what the board itself reads before it votes. When those systems get it wrong - the question is no longer whether there is liability, but where it lands.

The UK has no single AI statute. Instead, accountability is spread across directors’ duties, contract, tort, data protection, equality law, economic crime legislation and sector regulation - with the EU AI Act reaching into UK businesses that sell into or operate in the EU. For boards, that patchwork makes ownership of AI risk easy to assume and hard to evidence.

This virtual classroom seminar goes beyond the legal framework to the practical reality of AI failure. Alongside directors’ duties, liability routes and the EU AI Act, it looks at disclosure risk, the failure to prevent fraud offence, the use of generative AI in the boardroom itself and how to respond when a system goes wrong.

A worked case study and extended Q&A give delegates the chance to test the principles against their own organisations.

What You Will Learn

This live and interactive course will cover the following:

• Where AI now sits in the organisation
• The UK framework without a UK AI Act
• Directors’ duties applied to AI - sections 172 and 174 of the Companies Act 2006
• Mapping the chain of responsibility: developer, vendor, integrator and deployer
• When it goes wrong: the main liability routes - negligence, contract, misrepresentation, data protection and discrimination
• The long reach of the EU AI Act: when UK businesses are caught as providers or deployers
• Building board-level oversight: AI inventories, risk classification, policies, meaningful human review and assurance against standards
• Personal exposure and protection
• ‘AI washing’ and disclosure risk: misleading claims about AI capability or use in annual reports, prospectuses and marketing
• AI and the failure to prevent fraud offence
• Generative AI inside the boardroom itself: AI-drafted board papers, recording and minute-taking tools, confidentiality, legal professional privilege and the integrity of the board record
• Incident response when the algorithm fails
• Case study
• Practical toolkit: questions every board should be asking about AI

Recording of live sessions: Soon after the Learn Live session has taken place you will be able to go back and access the recording - should you wish to revisit the material discussed.