by Fernanda Torre
Beginning 2 February 2025, the EU AI Act introduced a requirement that any employee interacting with AI systems must receive appropriate AI literacy training. This is not optional. It applies to all AI system providers and deployers across the EU and requires companies to ensure their staff understand responsible use, basic model functions, and how to critically assess AI outputs.
This is a striking development for boards and management teams. If employees are required to be trained to a basic level, the expectation is clear: boards cannot remain behind. And this is not about one isolated director taking a course. Research from MIT CISR, led by Dr. Stephanie Woerner, shows that board capability must be built collectively. Companies with digitally savvy — and now AI savvy — boards, defined as boards with at least three directors who understand key technologies and AI-related concepts, significantly outperform their peers. Collective capability is no longer optional. It is a proven performance multiplier.
Table of Contents
Why Board Directors Need AI Training Now More Than Ever
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the strategic, operational, and ethical landscape in which companies operate. For boards, this shift is no longer abstract. It sits at the heart of competitiveness, risk oversight, talent strategy, and long-term value creation.
Yet across Europe and the Nordics, our research and recent book consistently reveal the same pattern: boards hold very different levels of AI understanding. Some directors follow developments closely, others are just beginning to explore the topic, and many feel uncertain about where to start or how deep they need to go. These differences create predictable challenges: uneven discussions, fragmented expectations, and diverse perceptions of risk and opportunity. In this context, AI training is no longer a “nice to have.” It has become a strategic baseline for effective governance. Boards must now be able to:
- Master AI fundamentals — understand core concepts, capabilities, limitations, and how AI is transforming industries.
- Integrate AI into strategy — assess how AI supports long-term value creation, competitiveness, and business transformation.
- Guide operational excellence in AI — oversee data governance, quality, innovation processes, and ecosystem partnerships.
- Evaluate AI’s sustainability impact — understand the dual role of AI in driving sustainability solutions while managing environmental and societal risks.
- Supervise robust AI governance — ensure oversight of bias, transparency, cybersecurity, accountability, and compliance with the EU AI Act and digital regulations.
- Monitor progress and cultivate AI leadership — track organisational maturity, benchmark against best practice, and develop board-level capability over time.
- Challenge management with informed questions — engage constructively and ensure decisions are grounded in ethical, strategic, and regulatory expectations.
- Ensure AI literacy cascades across the organisation — support management in building company-wide competence as mandated by the EU AI Act.
This is not merely a regulatory task. It is a governance obligation.
In developing the AI Leadership for Boards book, we saw first-hand how difficult it can be for boards to assess their true AI readiness. This is why we created the Boards 4AI Matrix — a practical tool developed specifically to help boards understand where they stand, align internally, and identify the actions needed to progress.
The Boards 4AI Matrix sits at the heart of the Boards 4AI Strategic Leadership Framework. It evaluates board readiness across two essential dimensions:
- Guiding AI Operational Capabilities — how boards direct data strategy, AI innovation, and ecosystem collaboration.
- Supervising AI Governance Capabilities — how boards oversee ethics, bias mitigation, transparency, regulation, and accountability.
- Where these two axes meet lies the board’s Strategic AI Ambition — the integration of AI into the long-range value creation agenda.
The Matrix includes seven levels of maturity, ranging from no engagement to world-leading AI practice. By assessing their organisation level by level, boards can locate their true position, identify gaps, and plan concrete next steps. The process is intentionally reflective and collaborative — helping boards align diverse perspectives and build a shared baseline of understanding.
We have tested the Matrix extensively across board networks, director interviews, and governance forums since we first published the first version in 2020. The insights are consistent:
- Effective AI leadership requires balancing oversight with innovation.
- Ethical, human-centric values must anchor all AI decisions.
- Governance structures must evolve: more adaptive, inclusive, and systemic.
- Boards recognize their societal responsibility in shaping AI’s impact, and the need to govern the ecosystem of AI
The Boards 4AI Matrix is therefore not an academic model, it is a practical governance tool. And it is one of the core elements used in our Hybrid Board Oversight of Responsible AI for Value Creation training.
Training Aligns the Board and Creates a Common Foundation
Using tools like the Boards 4AI Matrix is often the first moment when directors realise just how differently each member sees the organisation’s AI capabilities. These conversations highlight differences that normally stay unspoken in the boardroom.
Joint board education establishes a common language, a unified understanding of risks and opportunities, and a shared expectation of what “good” AI oversight actually looks like. It levels the playing field and enables the board to think, question, and act together. When the board has worked through frameworks such as the Matrix and explored concrete dilemmas side by side, the quality of strategic dialogue changes. Directors engage in deeper questioning, explore scenarios with more nuance, and hold a more coherent discussion about ambition and risk appetite.
Furthermore, research from MIT CISR, led by Dr. Stephanie Woerner, shows that board capability is not just a governance “nice to have” but a measurable performance driver. Companies with digitally savvy boards—defined as boards with at least three directors who understand key technologies, data, and digital business models—outperform peers by wide margins, including 38 percent higher revenue growth and 34 percent higher market cap growth. The updated 2024 findings go further, showing that boards must now be not only digitally savvy but also AI savvy to maintain this performance edge. Although this is shown by the research, only 26% of the inquired boards are digitally savvy and AI savvy. The lesson for the AI era is clear: capability cannot sit with one director alone. Boards must build their competence collectively so that strategic discussions, risk oversight, and decision-making rest on a shared foundation. Structured, group-based AI training is therefore essential. It helps boards reach the critical mass of understanding required to challenge management effectively, guide transformation, and create long-term value.
Why Boards Need Dedicated AI Training — Not Just Executive Briefings
One of the most consistent insights from our work with boards is that AI cannot be understood through executive briefings alone. Directors need a different kind of learning space — one that is designed for their responsibilities, grounded in governance, and focused on the dilemmas only boards face. AI raises questions about oversight, accountability, transparency, long-term value, and strategic ambition. These questions are not operational or technical. They belong in the boardroom.
This is why board-specific training has become so important. Directors need a confidential environment where they can discuss uncertainty openly, explore emerging risks, and test their thinking without judgement. They need to work with real board dilemmas, not abstractions — the kind that reveal how AI intersects with strategic direction, innovation pathways, ethics, talent, sustainability, and societal impact. And critically, they need a shared foundation. In every board we meet, directors begin with different levels of familiarity, different assumptions, and different questions. A structured learning experience gives the board a common baseline from which to lead.
It was precisely for this reason that we developed the Hybrid Board Oversight of Responsible AI for Value Creation program. The program combines flexible online learning with a full-day, either in-person or online, on 28 January 2026 , where directors come together to apply frameworks, explore cases, and practise through AI-powered boardroom simulations. These simulations are not theoretical exercises; they mirror the pressures and trade-offs boards are already facing, allowing directors to experiment with how to challenge management, how to sense early warning signs, and how to make decisions under uncertainty.
The learning journey builds board-level literacy and confidence, helping directors integrate AI into strategy and transformation, engage more effectively with management, and understand how to oversee AI in alignment with the EU AI Act, EU digital regulations, and global governance standards. Equally important, it strengthens the board as a collective. Directors across sectors consistently tell us that learning together — as peers — is what enables them to align perspectives and gain clarity in a fast-changing technological environment.
In an era where every organisation must ensure AI literacy across its workforce, boards must set the example. Joint education is becoming a hallmark of good governance, and the boards that embrace it now will be the ones best positioned to lead responsibly in an AI-driven world.
A Call to Action for Boards
AI is already transforming industries, workforces, customer expectations, and regulatory frameworks. Boards cannot lead responsibly without a baseline understanding of how AI creates value, where the risks lie, and how to guide management toward responsible, strategic implementation.
Training is one of the most effective ways to build that capability — together, in a structured and safe environment.
If companies must now train their employees to meet legal requirements on AI literacy, then the board must model the same commitment from the top. The future of governance demands nothing less. Board directors now face a clear choice: remain observers in the AI transition or build the collective competence needed to lead responsibly. Our training was created for the latter.
Explore Further
📘 Book launch 28th November
AI Leadership for Corporate Boards – Leading Responsible AI for Value Creation, Book by Fernanda Torre, Liselotte Engstam, and Robin Teigland, With contribution from Stanislav Shekshnia, published by Springer Nature
🎓 Learn More & Enrol in AI Board Training
Board Oversight of Responsible AI for Value Creation: New cohort beginning soon – early bird pricing available for a limited time – 50% off with the code BIF50Bird.
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