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Scaling responsible AI adoption

ARTICLE | July 3, 2025 | VOICES 

Scaling responsible AI adoption

Organizations racing to seize AI-powered opportunities can’t afford to overlook governance

By John Castelly, Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer at ServiceNow

It’s no secret that AI adoption is accelerating at an astounding pace. In fact, ServiceNow’s 2025 Enterprise AI Maturity Index, which surveyed executives at about 4,500 global companies, found that 82% of respondents plan to ramp up AI investments in the next year. ServiceNow itself is no exception. We’ve been an AI leader for more than a decade, but our AI usage has exploded over the last few years. It’s an opportunity for incredible innovation and value creation, and we’re seeing the benefits every day.

However, scaling AI adoption responsibly requires effective AI governance. It’s all about trust. Organizations rightly worry about AI risks such as hallucinations, privacy concerns, and misinformation. How do you confidently deploy AI while proactively minimizing these risks, and how do you take swift corrective action if deployed AI starts exhibiting concerning behaviors?

Organizations struggle with AI governance

There’s a huge gap between technology leaders’ eagerness to embrace the transformative potential of AI and their confidence in their ability to effectively govern it. In fact, a recent Deloitte survey found 80% of industry leaders expect generative AI (GenAI) to drive significant transformation in the next three years, but only 23% feel that their risk management and governance functions are ready to support scaling GenAI.  

ServiceNow has faced this governance challenge in our own AI journey. That’s why we’ve worked aggressively to establish an effective AI governance framework. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s been critical for scaling AI across our business. 

And we’ve learned a lot along the way. 

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Yes, compliance matters, and regulatory requirements are evolving all the time. However, focusing just on compliance won’t let you successfully scale AI. There are too many other moving parts that you need to address. Instead, you need an integrated approach that ensures the following:

  • Your AI strategy is aligned with corporate strategy and supports key business priorities.

  • AI development and deployment follow responsible practices that guarantee compliance and minimize unnecessary risk.

  • All AI elements in your organization are identified and tracked, providing complete visibility of where AI is deployed and how it’s used.

  • The performance of AI-powered applications is continuously monitored so you can react quickly if problems such as hallucinations or bias emerge.

  • The third parties you work with for AI are tightly integrated into your governance framework.

All of this takes processes and supporting technology that span your entire organization. It’s not just about having a central compliance team. AI governance touches many business functions and needs to be part of your organizational DNA.

When we started out, we had a lot of people working on different aspects of AI governance. Then we developed an overall strategy. Now, we’ve been able to coalesce and align these activities into a center of excellence. That gives us consistency and focus, allowing us to build the core competencies to scale AI adoption across ServiceNow.

Here are some critical things to know when establishing a center of excellence:

  • Be agile. AI evolves quickly, and your governance needs to evolve quickly as well. It’s important to start with a holistic plan, which will change as AI advances and you mature. Take an iterative approach: Roll out what you have, learn and adjust, and then learn some more.

  • Don’t start from scratch. Managing AI should be an extension of the programs you already have in place. Treat AI as another new technology, and do a gap analysis to ensure you’re mitigating AI-specific risks. Yes, that gap may be large and your processes may need to evolve, but this isn’t something fundamentally different.

  • Choose the right AI technology. Don’t get locked into a single AI vendor. Instead, assess your business needs and pick the technologies that are the best fit. Also remember that experience counts. Look for AI partners with a proven track record of success.

  • Understand what you’re governing. You can’t keep pace with AI by sitting in an ivory tower. Get hands-on and use the AI technology you’re governing.

  • Scaling takes underpinning technology. AI is going to reach every corner of your business, and you’ll be overwhelmed if you try to manage it manually. Look for technology solutions that help you align your AI investments with your AI strategy, streamline AI implementation, measure and optimize AI asset performance, and automate governance processes.

To scale AI adoption, you need effective AI governance. This isn’t just about compliance. It’s about creating alignment across your entire organization so you can quickly deploy AI with confidence. A well-structured governance approach aligns AI with your business priorities, drives responsible AI processes across the entire AI lifecycle, and accelerates AI innovation. That’s the foundation of successful AI-based transformation.

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Author

OG image (size: 1200*630px) author-john-castelly-1200x630.jpg Chief ethics & compliance officer, ServiceNow, John Castelly

John Castelly is ServiceNow’s chief ethics and compliance officer. Previously, he was the chief compliance officer at Personal Capital and most recently at Robinhood, where he designed and scaled its brokerage compliance programs. Castelly has held senior legal positions at Morgan Stanley and TD Ameritrade and served as special counsel for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Trading and Markets.

Articles by John Castelly