What is the cost of not governing AI agents?

Answer

The costs fall into four categories: regulatory fines (EU AI Act penalties up to 7% of global revenue), litigation exposure (bias, privacy violations, unauthorized actions), reputational damage (public incidents erode trust faster than any marketing can rebuild), and operational failures (uncontrolled agents making bad decisions at machine speed). The asymmetry is stark — governance costs are predictable and manageable; the cost of a governance failure is unbounded.