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Vocabulary
Key concepts
The working vocabulary behind Govern or Fail and the AI Governance Debt Quadrant. These terms are used precisely; here is what each one means.
- Governance debt
- Every ungoverned deployment is a liability the organisation has not yet priced.
- Shadow AI
- The AI estate that exists in practice but not in the inventory.
- Vendor-embedded AI
- AI shipped inside tools you already bought — governed by the vendor's choices, not yours, unless you make it your own.
- Runtime evidence
- Traces, logs, sources, and versions that show what the system actually did.
- Described vs demonstrated
- A policy describes governance. Only production behaviour demonstrates it.
- Governance discipline
- Evidence and enforcement — named owners, technically enforced boundaries, active monitoring — not the mere presence of a policy.
- Value velocity
- Attributable, quantified value reaching production — not activity counted as progress.
- Deterministic control
- Fixed boundaries and controls built around systems whose outputs are probabilistic.
- Governed velocity
- Speed that survives audit, because the path to production is designed, not negotiated.
- Certified is not governed
- A certificate attests a point in time. Governance operates continuously.
- Architecture beats culture
- Structural controls outlast good intentions, training sessions, and slogans.
See these ideas applied: take the 3-minute Quadrant assessment →