Building the foundations for accountable AI at Carlsberg Britvic - Ctrl Alt Lead podcast

“It’s like building the best car in the world but not looking at the quality of the roads”

As enterprises rush to adopt AI, much of the conversation remains fixated on models and vendors. Ajay Pancholi, IT infrastructure lead at Carlsberg Britvic thinks that’s a mistake.

In the latest episode of Ctrl Alt Lead, Penny speaks to Ajay Pancholi, IT infrastructure lead at Carlsberg Britvic and founder of the AI Security, Ethics and Governance UK community, about why that focus risks missing the bigger picture.

Pancholi argues that AI should be treated as critical infrastructure, not a standalone innovation. While models may attract the headlines, he believes they represent “only about 10% of the risk surface”, with the remaining exposure sitting in data governance, identity and access management, monitoring, supply chains and day‑to‑day operations.

“It’s like building the best car in the world, but nobody’s looking at the quality of the roads it’s going to travel on,” he says.

The discussion explores the dangers of opaque vendor ecosystems, including hidden dependencies, data handling uncertainty and vendor lock‑in, as well as the false sense of security that can arise when responsibility is outsourced. Pancholi also reframes governance as an enabler rather than bureaucracy, describing it as a set of guardrails that remove ambiguity and allow innovation to scale safely.

With many organisations still experimenting, Pancholi believes the next phase will be defined by accountable deployment, driven by regulation, competition and real‑world AI incidents. His advice to IT leaders is clear: build governance foundations now, create safe sandboxes, and treat AI as infrastructure from day one

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