The Surprising Data Around How Ethics Programs Use AI

"The Cobbler's Children" is an old story about a shoemaker who outfits the whole town while his own children go barefoot. This summer, Ethisphere and Ethena partnered to publish The State of AI Adoption in Ethics & Compliance, a report that surveyed 134 organizations representing senior E&C leaders around how and where they were adopting AI into their programs.

What we found was that E&C teams face their own version of the Cobbler’s Children fable. They spent two years writing the AI rules for their enterprises — approving tools, drafting guardrails, building governance. It worked. But we also found a surprising gap between how much E&C governed AI versus how much E&C actually implemented AI.

In fact, 67% of organizations have reached broad or advanced AI adoption. Yet only 22% of the E&C functions inside them can say the same—their the governance mandate arrived before the function's own buildout.

In this episode, Katie Kruger, Senior Culture Analyst at Ethisphere, discusses the role she played interrogating the survey data that informs The State of AI Adoption in Ethics & Compliance report. and shares a few exclusive findings that the report does not include.

To read The State of AI Adoption in Ethics & Compliance for free, as well as to try out our free AI benchmarking tool, visit www.ethisphere.com.