Ai Everything AbuDhabi Coverage:Trust in AI moves from model behavior to the systems around it

Abu Dhabi discussions connected autonomy with data security, human oversight and accountability.

ABU DHABI, 6 October 2026 — The trust debate at Ai Everything Abu Dhabi extended well beyond whether an AI model produces a good answer. Across the day’s conversations, the harder question was what happens when autonomous systems can access data, use tools and take action inside organizations.

“The Boundaries of Trustworthy AI” brought together Prof. Dr. Virginia Dignum of Umeå University, Cognizant chief AI officer Babak Hodjat, Dr. Alessandra Sala of the AI Office of Ireland and The Economist’s Alok Jha. The panel’s central issues were reliability, human oversight and protection for vulnerable users as autonomy grows. In a separate conversation, NetApp CEO George Kurian and Freshfields AI partner Anna Gressel focused on security and resilience across the data, infrastructure and systems an agent can reach.

Later, the question of scaling without losing control was taken up by Lucidya chief revenue officer William O’Neill, AD Ports Group CDIO Mohamed Jamal-Eddine, investor Axel Badalian and Gressel. Their panel connected innovation to accountability and public trust. Mehdi Paryavi of the International Data Center Authority and Bloomberg’s Mackenzie Hawkins closed the infrastructure track with a conversation on standards and digital infrastructure.

The same themes appeared in smaller sessions. Dignum’s masterclass examined how responsible-AI principles can become public value, while Ramanan Ramanathan of the India AI Mission led “Humanizing AI.” At AI Labs, Christophe Zoghbi of Zaka, Roland Rammal of Make.com, Mohamed El Hajj of Anthropic and Larissa Abi Nakhle of IEEE Entrepreneurship tackled the practical design of agentic systems that people can trust to run. Technology Innovation Institute engineer Ammar Battah linked safety and security to systems that move from sensor data to action at operational speed.