---
title: "AI governance: Definition"
description: "The policies, roles and controls that determine which AI uses are allowed, how risk is assessed, who approves deployments and how systems are monitored and"
canonical: https://sudosapient.si/terms/ai-governance
updated: 2026-10-27
publisher: Sudo Sapient (https://sudosapient.com/)
---
# AI governance

**AI governance:** The policies, roles and controls that determine which AI uses are allowed, how risk is assessed, who approves deployments and how systems are monitored and audited.

## Why it matters

Governance works best when it scales with risk. A low-risk internal drafting tool needs a named owner, logging and an acceptable-use note; a customer-facing system that makes decisions needs evals, approval steps, audit trails and periodic review. Heavy process for every experiment slows adoption without making systems safer.

## Related terms

- [Guardrails](https://sudosapient.si/terms/guardrails): Deterministic checks and limits around an AI model, such as schema validation, thresholds, allow-lists and approval gates, that prevent or catch harmful or invalid outputs.
- [Human-in-the-loop (HITL)](https://sudosapient.si/terms/human-in-the-loop): A design in which a person reviews, approves or corrects AI outputs at defined points, typically for uncertain or high-impact cases, with the decision logged.

## In practice

In a Sudo Sapient engagement this is settled in the one-week Discover phase, before any build starts. [The studio's process](https://sudosapient.com/services/) is on sudosapient.com.