94% will keep spending on AI even when it fails

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Somewhere on the 40th floor of a building you would recognize, a room full of people who could not create an email account without calling someone from IT is making the largest capital allocation decisions in the history of American business.<br>They are the board of directors, the people with fiduciary authority and a median age of 63+, the ones who vote on strategy and sign off on budgets whilst deciding the fate of hundreds if not thousands of workers.<br>The Conference Board's April 2026 report on AI governance found what anyone paying attention to this depressing (but vital) area already suspected: 83% of S&P 500 boards have identified artificial intelligence as a material risk, but only 2.7% of the directors sitting on those boards have any disclosed AI expertise.<br>It's essentially saying 83% of directors raised the alarm but only 2.7% could read the instrument panel to tackle the issue. This 30x canyon between those numbers is where $725 billion in spending decisions is being made and by their own admission, by the people least equipped in their own organizations to make them.<br>S&P 500 boards identified the risk and then didn't hire anyone who could evaluate it. The expertise bench has "nearly doubled" since 2021 — from 1.5% to 2.7%. Source: The Conference Board, "Governing AI in the S&P 500," April 2026.That 2.7% was 1.5% in 2021, so the expert bench has nearly doubled, which sounds encouraging until you picture what doubling actually looks like which is something like: having 2 buckets of water instead of one to tackle a 10 story fire.<br>Deloitte's Global Boardroom Program survey found 2 out of 3 board members reporting "limited to no knowledge or experience" with AI. Harvard Law School data found only 13% of S&P 500 companies have any directors with AI expertise on their boards at all. The companies employ 1000s of people who know this technology pretty darn well yet none of those people are sitting at the table where the money gets approved.<br>And these boards, their gas-leak detectors screaming, reached for a match rather than the experts in their company. $725 billion poured into a technology most of them have absorbed through magazine covers and dinner-party conversations with their adult children, approved by directors who identified the risk in their own filings and then, rather than hiring or using someone in their company who could evaluate it, simply wrote the check and hoped the spending itself would constitute a strategy, even if that means laying people off in the name of "AI."

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The geology of the canyon<br>Spencer Stuart's 2025 Board Index puts the average S&P 500 independent director at 63.6 years old. Departing directors average 68.5. The 66-to-70 cohort has swollen from 22% to 26% of boards since 2021, and 64% of companies with mandatory retirement policies now set the threshold at 75 or above, an age at which most professions would have handed you a watch and a cake two administrations ago yet very few people are being shown the door due to their age.<br>S&P 500 boards accrete like coral, each year depositing another thin layer that makes the structure more impressive, more rigid, and less capable of bending with the current, even as the decisions in front of them have become something the structure was never designed to hold. MIT's Center for Information Systems Research found a 14.7% point gap in return on equity between companies whose boards have digital and AI fluency and those whose boards do not.<br>What fills the canyon<br>Only 26% of boards discuss AI at every meeting, according to Protiviti. McKinsey found only 15% receive any AI-related metrics. Deloitte found 31% haven't put AI on their agenda at all. Yet almost all of these companies are making fundamental changes to their companies in the name of 'AI' without understanding it fully or having any grasp of the impacts.<br>On May 4, 2026, BCG published its "Split Decisions" survey of 625 leaders with the confession buried in the data: board directors with the lowest AI confidence are the most likely to say their organization is moving too slowly. The S&P 500 is being steered from the back seat by the passenger who understands the road least, eyes shut, screaming faster while the driver white-knuckles the wheel into a curve neither of them can see. 61% of CEOs said their boards are rushing AI transformation. 40% went further, saying their boards lack an informed view of how AI reshapes growth strategy. Board directors themselves are untroubled: 75% believe their AI knowledge is on par with or ahead of their peers, which would be hilarious if it wasn't so damning when you consider only 2.7% of them hold any expertise or credentials in this area and perfectly encapsulates how...