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The launch of ChatGPT in 2022, and its subsequent massification, was driven in part by promises from AI experts about the technology’s revolutionary potential, as well as by a widespread fear about the ethical use of such tools.
AI continues to be applied in a variety of sectors at an incalculable pace. Nearly 72% of companies in Latin America are in the early stages of adopting generative AI, according to MIT Technology Review.
Recently, the United Nations issued a warning about the gaps in the adoption of this technology. In the meantime, it still represents a huge business opportunity. According to Wall Street, spending by tech giants on AI will reach $490 billion by the end of 2026, up from previous estimates of $420 billion.
Yet amid the adoption and big spending, a new report from AI digital engineering and consulting firm Solvd found that there is a disconnect between techies and company executives: while 97% of CIOs care about AI ethics, only one-third have oversight.
A more thoughtful approach to Enterprise AI
For the report, Solvd surveyed 500 U.S.-based CIOs and CTOs at companies earning more than $500 million in ARR between July 24, 2025 and August 4, 2025, and found that executives face a dilemma: AI is evolving too fast to be fully controlled, yet its benefits are too valuable to ignore.
All respondents noted that they have benefited from the use of AI technologies, including better strategy forecasting, improved customer service, faster and more targeted hiring processes, and cost savings. With this, it is easy to conclude that the role of AI is increasingly critical in driving business success.
Regardless, companies continue to face talent shortages and rising costs, along with the practical challenges of leveraging a technology that 37% of respondents felt is integrating faster than they can control.
“AI is moving fast, but expectations are moving faster […] We believe ethical AI can be a sustainable force for companies to improve resilience, unlock talent and enable strategic change,” noted Solvd CEO Adam Gabrault.
AI ethics can no longer wait
According to the report, CIOs and CTOs are concerned about the unethical use of AI within their companies, although only 34% of respondents identified it as the biggest threat to cost management and strategy creation.
This gap in the timeline, from AI going mainstream in 2022 to the implementation of universal ethical benchmarks for its use, is not surprising. According to Harvard Law School’s Corporate Governance Forum, the rise of AI has led to AI-related shareholder proposals in the U.S., with 23 filed between January 2023 and June 2024.
“The main contributor to this increase was proposals calling for transparency about AI use and corporate ethical guidelines, which were filed by seven companies. For the first time in 2024, shareholders also called for specific board powers of responsibilities aimed at improving oversight of AI,” Harvard noted.
Solvd’s findings further show the urgency of paying attention to ethical uses of AI within companies. “Without proactive oversight, companies risk costly regulatory and reputational penalties once stricter standards inevitably take hold,” read the firm’s press release.
In September 2024, for example, U.S. facial recognition company Clearview AI was fined more than $30 million by the Dutch data protection watchdog for building “an illegal database” of billions of faces taken from social networks and the Internet to sell facial recognition services.
More recently, on September 25, 2025, a judge approved a landmark $1.5 billion settlement of a copyright class action lawsuit filed against Anthropic, an AI research and security company, for using unauthorized books in training its Claude AI model.
“AI adoption must be innovative and sustainable, it doesn’t have to be either/or,” Gabrault concluded.
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