EY survey: agentic AI adoption at large US companies outpaces oversight

The EY AI Risk and Governance Survey, published Sept. 15, polled board members, C-suite executives and other senior leaders at companies with at least $1 billion in annual revenue between May 28 and June 15. Nearly all respondents, 98%, said their organizations have formal AI governance policies, but 47% acknowledged that those processes had been skipped for urgent deployments.

Among organizations using agentic AI, 85% said at least some of those systems carry out actions without real-time human involvement, and 26% said they could not detect unauthorized AI agents operating internally. Across the full sample, 89% reported encountering AI-related risks in the past year.

Formal assurance reviews, which 98% said they conduct at least annually, often led to changes: 64% significantly modified a quarter or more of their AI systems, 29% paused that share and 25% stopped that share entirely. John McLain, an EY Americas assurance AI leader, said the main agentic AI risk is that human oversight has not kept pace. The online survey was commissioned by EY's Americas Assurance team and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 7 percentage points.