Australian organisations are delegating decision-making to AI systems faster than their governance frameworks can support, with half of C-suite leaders prepared to hand AI more autonomy than their current controls allow, new research from Insight Enterprises has found.
The findings come from Insight's Assistance to Autonomy report, which examines how leaders are managing the shift from assistive AI to autonomous systems that execute tasks and make decisions within defined parameters. The research, conducted via Pureprofile between 30 April and 4 May 2026, surveyed 318 Australian and 220 Singaporean business decision-makers at organisations with 100 or more employees. The release is at au.insight.com.
Most Australian organisations remain early in their AI journey. Only 21 per cent are scaling AI across functions, 42 per cent remain in experimentation, 30 per cent are piloting and just 8 per cent have fully embedded AI into operations. Singapore is well ahead, with 37 per cent scaling across functions and 14 per cent fully embedded.
Despite that early-stage maturity, organisations are already delegating decisions to AI - a dynamic Insight calls the autonomy paradox.
"Businesses are increasing their reliance on AI faster than they are developing the governance, trust, and control capabilities needed to support it," said Mike Morgan, SVP and Managing Director, APAC at Insight. "Governance cannot follow implementation; it has to be built alongside it."
Nearly half of Australian leaders (47 per cent) describe their organisations as being in early exploration for autonomous AI, while only 10 per cent consider themselves highly prepared. In Singapore, nearly 40 per cent of leaders report being moderately prepared and 20 per cent highly prepared.
The tension is sharpest at the top. Fifty per cent of Australian founders, CEOs and C-suite leaders say they are prepared to delegate more to AI than current governance frameworks allow, compared with 39 per cent of the management layer below them.
Structural barriers are slowing progress. Legacy system integration is the top barrier to scaling AI. More than half of Australian organisations (53 per cent) say their data is only somewhat ready for AI, and a further 20 per cent say it is not ready at all. Skills shortages weigh particularly on mid-market organisations.
"Organisations are not waiting until they are fully ready to delegate to AI; they are doing it now, under pressure to deliver outcomes," Morgan said.