Controls and the Future of AI Governance: From Agentic AI to Orchestrated SLMs
Presented at the Corporate Governance & Ethics in the Age of AI conference, February 3, 2026
Most enterprises remain in the early AI governance stage, but some are already transitioning to Agentic implementations. Those deployments will become mainstream production tools in many companies within the year, closely followed by the deployment of tiered hierarchies where major LLMs orchestrate interactions among many specialized, narrow Small Language Models (SLMs). That architectural shift will create a diffusion of accountability that will impact firm's regulatory defenses unless they properly prepare for it.
Key Takeaways
The Foundational Gap: Despite the talk of autonomous agents, the immediate boardroom priority remains the "Three Pillars": establishing crisp auditability, enforceable policies, and objective testing for success.
The Advent of Agentic AI: As agentic AI is deployed into enterprises, the best governance response is to minimize risk by minimizing the agentic surface via three specific testing vectors: input validation, model interaction capture, and output testing.
AI Risk Management Plugs in to Existing ERM Frameworks: AI governance is not a new silo; it’s an extension of existing corporate governance protocols and processes and integrates well within the traditional Three Lines of Defense model.
Read the LinkedIn Post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cookchristopher_aigovernance-compliance-enterpriseai-activity-7427330268434452480-yL06?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAACQe40BJFp--0eFN1xHPH5RHediTUCZd9o
