It’s been close to thirty years now that I’ve jumped out of bed when the haunting fire siren goes up and headed out with our local volunteer brigade. In that time I’ve seen more than my fair share of car wrecks, house fires and middle-of-the-night callouts that turn out to be burnt toast. Each incident is different, but there’s a common thread: no algorithm or manual can prepare you for what you’ll find when you arrive. You’re relying on training, sure, but also on instinct, gut calls and the tacit knowledge that comes from years of being in the thick of it. The person who’s been to a hundred house fires knows when the floorboards might give way, and when to pull a crew back even if the “data” doesn’t yet say it’s dangerous.
That tension between analysis and human judgement is at the heart of firefighting, and I’d argue it’s exactly the same in the boardroom. Lately there’s been a lot of chat about whether artificial intelligence will eventually take the place of directors. Some suggest that boards are ripe for automation, that governance could be made cleaner, quicker and cheaper by handing it over to algorithms trained on decades of case law, compliance frameworks and best practice. In theory, a machine could cut through the politics and biases that often slow decision-making.
But if I’ve learned anything in nearly three decades with the brigade, it’s that no two fires are ever the same. And no two board situations are either. The role of a director isn’t about following a perfect checklist; it’s about being present in messy, unpredictable situations, and bringing human context to decisions that affect people’s lives.
Yes, AI can help. In fact, just as firefighters use thermal imaging cameras to see through smoke or predictive models to anticipate wildfire spread, directors can and do lean on data-heavy tools. AI can analyse market conditions, detect compliance risks, or even draft policy recommendations. That’s incredibly useful. But just as a camera can’t replace the judgment of the officer in charge of a fireground, AI can’t replace the responsibility carried by a board member.
Think about what directors actually do. They balance competing priorities: shareholder value against community expectations, cost savings against staff wellbeing, innovation against reputational risk. These aren’t binary problems that yield to optimisation. They’re human dilemmas, often with no “right” answer, just the best decision a group of people can own, defend and live with.
And ownership really matters here. If a company makes a poor call, the directors are the ones who must front up, sometimes to shareholders, sometimes to the courts, often to the public. Accountability isn’t just a governance box-tick, it’s the core of the role. When I’m the incident controller at a fire, part of my job is to explain later why I pulled crews out or why I let them keep going. Those are heavy calls that can’t be delegated to a machine. The buck stops with you.
It’s also about relationships. In firefighting, you build trust with the community not just by turning up when the siren goes, but by being part of that community in the first place. People see familiar faces behind the helmets. Boards, too, exist in a social context. Directors bring their lived experience, their networks, their credibility. That’s what gives weight to their decisions and reassures stakeholders that someone real is in charge. No one’s going to feel comforted by “DirectorBot v2.0” making pronouncements from the cloud.
Of course, I’m not saying boards are perfect. Anyone who’s sat through a governance meeting knows how painfully slow and political they can be. Bias, ego and inertia often get in the way of good decisions. But that’s part of the messy human condition, and in governance, it’s inseparable from the role. You can build tools to support better conversations, you can use AI to surface insights more quickly, but you can’t remove the human responsibility at the heart of the board.
There’s a similarity, too, in how crises unfold. Fires escalate in unexpected ways, just as corporate crises do. I’ve been at incidents where all the models said we had things under control, only for a sudden wind change to suddenly change the game. In those moments, experience and intuition matter far more than what the software or models say. Boards face the same thing: reputational blow-ups on social media, sudden regulatory shifts, geopolitical shocks. You need humans with steady hands and moral compasses to guide you through the storm.
So no, I don’t believe AI will replace directors any time soon. It will make them sharper, better informed and, hopefully, less bogged down in paperwork. It might even challenge them to confront their own blind spots by surfacing perspectives they’d otherwise miss. But governance is ultimately about judgement, trust and accountability. Those are human traits, messy, fallible and sometimes frustrating, but irreplaceable all the same.
When I look back at the years of fire calls, it’s not the shiny gear or the new technology I remember most. It’s the moments of human decision: the quiet nod to pull a crew out, the reassurance given to a frightened family on the roadside, the call made in the heat of the moment that could never be reduced to an algorithm. Directors, like firefighters, live with the weight of those decisions. AI might be a powerful ally, but it won’t carry that weight for you.
