Public company directors are in a hard spot with AI. They are responsible for overseeing it, the technology is moving faster than the frameworks meant to govern it, and the formal board setting is the worst possible place to admit you are not sure what to ask.

I started running a dinner series for exactly this, part of Open Future Forum. It puts public company directors in a private room with a few operators and experts, off the record, around one governance question at a time. The first one focused on quantum computing. Others have looked at where AI oversight is actually heading.

The value is not the content. Directors can get content anywhere. The value is the candor. In the room, a director can say “I do not understand this well enough yet” to peers who are quietly thinking the same thing, without it ending up in a proxy statement.

If you sit on a public company board and carry any AI oversight, or you chair an audit, risk or technology committee, this is the room. You can read more about it here: an AI community for public company directors.

The hardest questions in governance right now are not being answered on stage. They are being worked through over dinner, with people who have the same job and the same doubts.

Murray Newlands is the founder of Open Future Forum, a Silicon Valley executive community, and a Partner at IA Seed Ventures.