CEOs press CIOs to rethink IT's role in the AI era

Keeping systems running and protecting the business from cyberthreats have long been CIO responsibilities. In the AI era, business leaders want more.

CEOs want CIOs who can help change how the business operates, identify opportunities for growth and lead AI adoption across the organization. Some executives see a gap between those expectations and IT’s traditional focus on prioritizing stability, security and cost control.

To find out what business leaders need most from their CIOs, TechTarget asked five CEOs and three other executives the same question: As we enter the AI revolution, what do you need most from your CIO?

Several called for CIOs to become more active business partners, with some arguing that traditional IT approaches need to change. Respondents also emphasized the CIO's role in hiring new talent, establishing AI governance, improving everyday work and measuring results.

Here's what they had to say.

What do you need most from your CIO?

When I think about a product team versus an IT department that's worried about whether the computers work and cyberthreats, there's a pace difference. When you talk to IT people and say, 'We have to move faster,' it often feels like you're throwing caution to the wind.

IT departments must move at a faster pace than they're used to and find the perfect balance of not putting security at risk, and understanding that there needs to be a cultural change on delivery and timelines -- more like a SaaS startup than an IT department.

-- Mike Sullivan, co-founder and chief growth officer, OneDigital

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It's two things. One is your IT department needs to be the most AI-native department in the company, and a lot of them aren't. Ironically, the technology people are the slowest to adapt when it comes to AI. If your CIO isn't fully activated and their team isn't activated, you're not going to get anywhere.

Number two is that it requires a deep partnership with your HR department, because this is a talent problem. Not talent as in our people need to change -- they do -- but we actually need to hire a new type of talent. And the CIO is really facilitating a hiring process, not implementing new technology, and that understanding of their role is really important.

-- Vinay Gidwaney, chief product officer, OneDigital

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CEOs need a CIO who's much more of a business partner in the transformation. Most CIOs are custodians who take care of the traditional stack, make sure it can't be hacked and make sure everything's going okay. We're going into much more transformation, and somebody must lead all this transformation on the technical side, and it's always the CIO or CTO.

That person needs to be business-oriented, see AI as an opportunity to help the business and lean hard into it. Probably only 10 to 15% of CIOs have that mindset because you usually don't get fired as a CIO if you're not innovative enough. You always get fired for security or cost overruns.

So, the CIOs thriving will be the ones really leaning into AI innovation, which is atypical.

-- Paul Baier, CEO and co-founder, GAI Insights

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I want my CIO to build the governance structure, not micromanage the individual solutions. That means mapping the tools, data and daily tasks in every function. Then every dataset and tool gets labeled with who can read it, change it or act with it.

The rule I care about most is that the AI gets the same permissions as the person it's acting for. If a salesperson can't see payroll, the AI answering that salesperson can't either. I'd also have a central approval body for AI projects, but with very liberal approval policies. This could even be automated -- the main goal is to ensure duplicate work doesn't happen.

Get this right and AI is safe to use across the company. Skip it and you end up with a pile of disconnected pilots that go nowhere.

-- Akhil Verghese, co-founder and CEO, Krazimo

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We need a CIO who can translate AI from a technology discussion into a business strategy. That means helping the organization identify where AI can create measurable value, improve efficiency, enhance the client experience and support growth -- all while ensuring we have the governance, security and data foundations necessary to do it responsibly.

Our CIO and entire AI committee do an incredible job helping firm leaders move beyond experimentation and focus on scalable use cases that tie back to business objectives. Additionally, AI adoption requires clear policies, human oversight, data integrity and strong change management -- all of which the CIO should help drive.

-- Bruce Zicari, CEO and managing partner, The Bonadio Group

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Every CEO must ensure their tech leadership turns AI ambition into business outcomes. This is where the value of AI lies. I need my team to have a strategy that outlines what we're trying to accomplish, the proper infrastructure to support it and, most importantly, the ability to measure whether we're actually making an impact.

I also need honesty from these leaders and a willingness to identify where AI is genuinely useful versus where it is being adopted simply because it's new. A great CIO is well-versed not only in different types of technologies but also in the different types of problems the business is trying to solve, because different problems require different technologies.

For example, decision problems should be approached differently from predictive problems. The most effective technology leaders recognize those distinctions and match the right tools to the right use cases, ensuring AI investments deliver meaningful results.

-- Duke Perrucci, CEO, Gurobi Optimization

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The CIO has a primary responsibility to build AI systems and a shared responsibility -- alongside product and business teams -- to deploy and scale those systems, with a focus on usability and adoption.

First, CIOs must build secure, accurate and scalable AI systems. The CIO needs to steward and govern the underlying data, models, infrastructure and automated outputs required to maintain trust and transparency across the tech stack.

Second, they must stay tightly connected to the business. Technology decisions should start with the business problem we are solving, the value we can create for clients and how the solution can be packaged profitably and scaled.

Third, CIOs should make usability part of the tech strategy. That means thinking beyond model performance to UX, workflow integration, unit economics, human-in-the-loop design and client adoption.

Finally, CIOs must build an organization that can adapt quickly. CIOs need the right mix of data science, machine learning, cloud and information security capabilities, using a build, buy or partner approach based on the business use case.

-- Krishna Nacha, CEO, Integreon

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The modern CIO's job is to make the whole organization measurably more productive with AI. The AI revolution will be won by organizations that give every employee the ability to do their work safely, faster, with fewer handoffs and less friction.

One of the most obvious ways AI can do this is by alleviating the everyday drag on a business: service requests, approvals, access provisioning, onboarding and repetitive support work that quietly consumes thousands of hours.

When a CIO removes that drag, productivity compounds across every team. Employees across HR, legal, finance and IT who get stuck spending time responding to the same question over and over again are freed up to focus on work that delivers value. At the same time, employees who need support are getting answers to their questions instantly.

-- Alex McLeod, co-founder and CTO, Serval

Tim Murphy is a reporter covering IT strategy for Informa TechTarget, with a focus on IT leadership, governance, workforce skills and AI strategy. His enterprise technology coverage has earned multiple Azbee Awards.