Frontier · Vol 10 · Report

The Director's Dilemma

What boards owe oversight now that every company is at least dependent on advanced AI.

Published May 2026Report FL-2026-10For Boards of Directors · General Counsel · C-Suite Executives · Institutional InvestorsPublisher: FAIR Labs, Washington, DC
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The Director's Dilemma: Fiduciary Duty in the Age of AI

A ~15-minute audio interview about the report with Dr. Krzysztof Pietroszek, President of FAIR Labs. Produced with www.allais.com.

Summary

Every company is now at least dependent on advanced AI. That makes oversight a board duty, not a management memo. You do not need to build frontier models to carry frontier-scale risk. A company that merely runs on AI-dependent vendors and infrastructure inherits the concentration and continuity exposure this series spends nine volumes mapping. This closing volume asks what a board specifically owes oversight, once "we don't really do AI" stops being a defense.

The tenth and closing volume of the Frontier Series is written for the people who will be asked, after the fact, what the board knew and when. It argues that AI oversight is now squarely a board duty for every company — not just the ones building frontier models, since even the most AI-distant firm is at minimum dependent on vendors and infrastructure this series treats as a monoculture risk. The report names three postures a company can hold, builds the due-diligence playbook and committee architecture each requires, and closes the series with the self-assessment a board can run before its next AI-related decision.

How to cite this report

The Director's Dilemma: What boards owe oversight now that every company is at least dependent on advanced AI. FAIR Labs Frontier Series, Vol. 10. Fair Artificial Intelligence Research Labs, 2026. Available at https://fairlabs.ai/research/frontier-vol10-the-directors-dilemma

Topics: corporate governance, board oversight, fiduciary duty, due diligence, AI risk disclosure

FAIR Labs (Fair Artificial Intelligence Research Labs) is a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) research institute in Washington, DC. Its reports may be reproduced with attribution for non-commercial purposes. For interviews, briefings or data requests, use the contact form.

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