Course: AI Governance & Policy Frameworks Pathway: Governance (Paid) Level: Advanced Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
Risk management is the engine room of AI governance. Principles and policies matter, but they only become meaningful when you can systematically identify what could go wrong, assess how likely and severe it is, and put controls in place. This lesson gives you a practical approach to AI risk assessment that you can apply in your organisation.
If you come from a traditional risk management background, AI will feel familiar and foreign at the same time. The discipline is the same — identify, assess, mitigate, monitor — but AI introduces characteristics that conventional risk frameworks weren't designed for:
Opacity. Many AI systems, particularly deep learning models, are difficult or impossible to fully explain. You can't always trace why a specific decision was made, which complicates both risk assessment and incident investigation.
Emergent behaviour. AI systems can produce outcomes that weren't anticipated during development. A model trained to optimise customer engagement might learn to exploit psychological vulnerabilities. A hiring algorithm might develop proxy discrimination that wasn't visible in testing.
This lesson is part of AI Policy & Compliance for NZ Workplaces — a paid course (NZ$39.00). Enrol to unlock the full lesson, audio, and completion tracking.
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