Far from being something remote and unfathomable, artificial intelligence (AI) should no longer be just a confined attribution to those who possess IT skills, nor be discussed only when it is feared that it could replace the functions carried out by human beings. AI is right now revealing itself as an essential tool in dealing with some of the intricacies that have emerged due to the current global health crisis. As AI’s potentialities clearly emerge, confidence in such a technology as a means not only for recovery but, more in general, for change strengthens at all levels, including that of the board of directors. The positive implications that AI can bring about in the transformations of companies can however only be exploited if the risks generated by its employment are addressed by the corporate governance systems of the companies themselves, and specifically tackled by the board of directors, directly or in one of its committees such as the tech committee.

Our study aims at clarifying whether tech committees are currently the place where potentialities and risks of AI employment are faced. In order to do this, we consider North American and EU listed companies that have adopted a tech committee in the period 2000- 2019 and the companies’ documents describing tech committees’ activities. On the selected samples, we carry out both quantitative and qualitative analysis to understand the features of tech committees, of their members and, in particular, to identify the functions that such committees perform in practice. Besides the differences between the two jurisdictions considered, the (definitely surprising) outcome is that tech committees have not dealt with AI (at least in the first twenty years of their lives) as hoped (and perhaps as even expected), but that they play a rather predominantly strategic and monitoring role, often flanked by risk management functions.