The debate over artificial intelligence can leave business leaders caught between promises of greater productivity and warnings about risks beyond their control. Both deserve attention. But I believe this framing can obscure a more immediate responsibility. Whatever governments and technology developers decide next, leaders still have choices to make about the information their organizations reveal and the access they give new tools.
Those choices matter to employees, customers, and suppliers whose information businesses hold. In its 2025 assessment, Britain's National Cyber Security Centre judged that attackers were almost certainly already using AI to support activities including research into potential targets and social engineering. That offers a practical reason to examine exposure today, without assuming that every new capability will produce a crisis.
