AI Is Moving Fast. But Who’s Watching the AI?

On this episode of Insurance Town, I sat down with Joseph Varga, founder of Forge Orbital, for a conversation about AI governance, agentic AI, and what businesses especially those of us in highly regulated industries like insurance need to be thinking about as this technology continues to move at an unbelievable pace.

Joseph breaks down the difference between the AI most of us have gotten comfortable with and the proactive, agentic systems that are beginning to take action on our behalf. And while that creates incredible opportunity for efficiency and growth, it also creates a whole new set of questions around accountability, transparency, data, and trust.

One of the biggest ideas we unpack is the concept of the AI “black box.”

If an AI system drafts an email, makes a recommendation, assists with underwriting, or helps influence a claims decision, can you explain exactly how it arrived at that answer?

And more importantly, could you recreate that decision two years from now if a regulator, customer, carrier, or attorney asked you to?

That’s where Joseph believes governance becomes critical.

We also get into the idea of having AI check AI. On the surface, having one model review another sounds like a strong safeguard. But as Joseph explains, if both systems are probabilistic, you may simply be getting a second opinion—not actual proof.

For insurance professionals, that distinction matters.

Joseph also shares how Forge Orbital approaches governance differently by operating as a deterministic layer in the background—helping organizations create rules, evidence boundaries, audit trails, and human checkpoints without creating yet another dashboard employees have to manage.

And yes, we absolutely talked about dashboard fatigue.

This conversation isn’t about being afraid of AI.

It’s about using AI responsibly.