Why executive judgment decides who wins with AI

Thoughtworks argues that most organisations cannot name who answers for an AI agent's behaviour, and that people must own each new decision the first time it arises.

Thoughtworks, a technology consultancy, published Tom Holbourn and Alexander Moore's write-up of a keynote Moore gave at a forum for technology chiefs in New York. Moore, its vice president of AI solutions, cites research that about 90% of organisations cannot name who is accountable for a given AI agent's behaviour. He sets out three rules for closing that gap.

• About four in five organisations lack clear rules on what their AI agents may do without supervision, according to the research cited.
• A third of organisations override AI outputs case by case with no formal criteria.
• Moore's first rule is that people must own unwritten decisions the first time they are made, and his second turns those decisions into policy.
• His third rule gives the experts closest to the work the tools to override the system when the data does not add up.

This is a consultancy's argument drawn from more than 200 of its own engagements; it names no clients and gives no method for its figures. Naming one accountable person for each AI agent before it runs unsupervised is an inference and is not the author's claim.

Derived by Working Surface from the article; more in the Playbook. Source line: People must own unwritten decisions the first time they're made.

17 October 2026: AI output that looks finished at first glance still needs a named person who checks it against something real, and teams now plan their work around that check.