AI governance is fast becoming one of

APAC’ s most critical leadership challenges and trust is central to getting it right because without it, users will avoid integrating the tool into their workflow operations.

Randy Goh, Area Vice President, ASEAN, Dataiku, explores why AI governance is emerging as one of the region’ s key challenges

– and how enterprises can close the gap between ambition and execution.

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According to the World Economic Forum’ s Advancing Responsible AI Innovation report, despite rising awareness, responsible AI practices remain largely immature. A 2025 survey of 1,500 organisations found that 81 % are still in the first two early stages of responsible AI maturity. In Asia Pacific specifically, the gap is even more pronounced.

One of the key themes throughout was the importance of strong governance and building trust, as well as the need to invest in the underlying infrastructure that allows AI to scale effectively, beyond just data centres.

Randy Goh, Area Vice President, ASEAN, Dataiku, offers his expert advice.

Why is AI adoption outpacing governance and what systemic risks does this create for enterprises in APAC?

Firstly, we have to evaluate Artificial Intelligence( AI) not just from a strategy perspective, but also from a governance, data readiness and human talent perspective.

The reality is that AI adoption in Asia Pacific( APAC) is accelerating faster than internal governance mechanisms can keep pace. This leaves enterprises exposed to systemic risks, including shadow AI, data misuse, biased decision‐making and opaque incident accountability across borders.

The full extent of the matter was laid bare in the recent World Economic Forum Advancing Responsible AI Innovation report, which found that only 1 % of organisations in the region have fully operationalised responsible AI, with most relying on partial, defined but limited, or ad hoc measures.

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INTELLIGENT CIO APAC www. intelligentcio. com