AI Governance Must Account for Autonomous Work Systems

As AI systems move from assistive tools to autonomous agents performing actual work, governance frameworks built around human oversight are breaking down. Companies need to audit and control what these systems do independently, not just how they help employees do their jobs. The distinction is practical: you can't log user actions or require human approval when the AI is the primary actor executing tasks and making real-time decisions in production environments. This forces enterprises that treated AI governance as a compliance checkbox to rebuild it as an operational requirement.