Everyone agrees AI matters. Almost nobody has laid the foundations.

Three in four business leaders now say AI is critical or very important to their business.

But just 13% have the foundations in place to do anything serious with it.

Those two figures come from SmarterX’s 2026 State of AI for Business Report, an international survey of more than 2,000 people in business, most of them already keen on AI. So this is not sceptics dragging their heels, these are the businesses leading the AI implementation across the world. Even among the keen, hardly anyone has built the groundwork, which is frankly astounding.

That is the gap in a nutshell. Nearly everyone agrees AI is important. Almost nobody has the foundations in place, which is not a great way to build for the future.

Just think about building a house. You would not start on the walls before the foundations were solidly in the ground. Getting AI right is no different.

Before you let it loose in your business, you need these four foundations in first.

Here is what each one is, and what it looks like in practice.

Your Chief AI Officer

Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have. Nobody did.

That is AI in most businesses. On everyone’s mind, and no one’s to-do list.

Someone has to own this. Not the whole team, not ‘we should all have a go’, one person whose job it is to head it up and move AI forward.

In some firms it might not be a full-time role. It is usually a switched-on manager or a director, handed the remit, a few protected hours a week, and a small budget to experiment with.

Their job is not to know everything about AI. Their job is to keep it moving, so it does not quietly stall the way most good intentions do. AI is moving fast, so that time needs protecting. Otherwise, the change will not happen.

Without this dedicated person, AI becomes everybody’s idea and nobody’s job.

Your AI manifesto

Then you need a plan. It might be a single page. Where are we now, and where we want to go with AI.

The key is to pick things you can do now, easily, step by step.

A plan is what stops AI being a pile of half-finished experiments and turns it into one thing that lands. It is also the rarest foundation of the lot. Fewer than one in three businesses has one, which for one of the most fundamental changes that’s going to happen at work for the next few years, is a little astonishing.

Your AI policy

Next come the rules. The plain, day-to-day stuff. Which tools are approved, what can go into them, and what absolutely cannot. This might be client data, anything commercially sensitive, and anything you would not be happy emailing to a stranger. What’s important is that you decide; this should not be left to chance.

Keep it simple. Write it in English, not legal speak, so everyone knows what they can and cannot do.

Most data slips are not the work of master criminals. They are usually a good intentioned member of your team trying to save themselves half an hour, when they did not know what they could or could not do with AI.

Your AI ethics policy

The fourth foundation is your ethics policy, and it sits a level above the rules. The rules are about how people use AI. This is about where you are willing to let AI have a say at all and be straight with your stakeholders about it.

It comes down to three things. Humans stay in charge of any decision that affects a person, recruitment being the obvious one, and the call always stays with a human. That part is vital. You also keep a human in the loop on the work AI does. As we say at ConkerAI, ‘You’re the star. AI’s the support act.’ And you stay aware of bias, because AI can be biased in ways you would not spot unless you were looking for them.

Write those three down and you will start to have the foundations of your ethics policy.

There may be fundamental areas of your business you just don't want AI in at all because of your people skills or for other reasons known to your business, and that's OK. You have to decide.

Where this leaves you

So that is the groundwork. A Chief AI Officer, a manifesto, a policy, and an ethics policy. Get those four in and AI has something solid to stand on. Skip them and you are likely building on foundations made of sand, however clever the tools may seem.

Now you know what a solid AI setup looks like. Someone in charge, a plan, the rules, and a clear line on ethics. That is one of the things we help businesses put in. We use our roadmap tool to help you help yourselves. Applying that step-by-step process helps you move on your AI journey more quickly and with direction. If if you think that would be useful for you, and please get in touch.

Andrew and Jo, ConkerAI