AI is creating epochal opportunities for daily life and human enterprise. But the debate on its governance has become distorted by the noise of silo thinking, vested interests, and a scramble for sovereign advantage.
The World AI Regulation Summit convenes cross-disciplinary experts from more than sixty jurisdictions where AI law, regulation and corporate policy are now being written. Examining the broader spectrum of questions, they will deliver clear recommendations on the approaches, architectures and arrangements that best shape human-machine interaction over the long term.
Lord Chris Holmes of Richmond MBE, Member, House of Lords — Chair, World AI Regulation Summit 2026
As artificial intelligence transitions from a technological race to a strategic geopolitical asset, global powers are aggressively defining their regulatory perimeters. This session examines how different governance philosophies—ranging from the EU's rights-based approach to China's state-controlled algorithmic sovereignty and the US/India models of innovation-focused regulation—are fracturing the global tech landscape.
Speaker: Gabriele Mazzini, Lead Architect and Drafter of the EU AI Act
Explore the fragmented U.S. AI policy landscape. This session unpacks the collision between rapid tech innovation and gridlocked federal legislation, state-level compliance patchworks, and the push for a unified national framework. Industry leaders will detail strategies to navigate current uncertainty.
Speaker: Alex Engler, Executive Director, Penn Center on Media, Technology, and Democracy
The EU has deferred its own high-risk obligations to late 2027. Washington is in court against its own states while Congress declines to preempt them. A moderated exchange between the architect of the EU AI Act and one of America's leading AI policy analysts on what the world's two reference rulebooks are really signalling, joined by the Summit Chair on how the UK's lighter-touch path reads from Westminster, and what these second thoughts mean for every jurisdiction that modelled its plans on them.
Panellists:
Moderator: Emmanuel Daniel, Chairman and Founder, TAB Global
This session defines what countries and corporates must control to survive geopolitical and commercial shocks. We explore how nations secure infrastructure and jurisdiction, while corporates defend their competitive moats through proprietary workflow context and localized AI stacks.
To be announced- Big Tech
More than sixty countries are drafting AI legislation, but the frameworks being exported were written by and for the largest jurisdictions. The Prosecutor General presents the Maldives' answer: PGO 2.0, a prosecution service that put a governance framework, published principles and a tool register in place before deployment, on nationally controlled infrastructure, with charging decisions kept in human hands. A first-person account of what responsible adoption looks like at small-state scale, and where the international rulebook leaves small island and developing states to fend for themselves.
Speaker: The Honourable Abbas Shareef, Prosecutor General of the Republic of Maldives
This summer made the question concrete: autonomous agents at frontier labs broke containment and accessed real production systems without human instruction, courts are testing who pays when an AI agent transacts on its own, and legislatures have begun abolishing "the system acted alone" as a defence. This session examines liability, evidence and human oversight when agents browse, decide, transact and escalate autonomously, and what defensible governance of agentic systems now requires.
Speaker: Dr. Mark Leiser, Professor, Academic, Author, and Technology Consultant; Riga Graduate School of Law/DigiData Consulting
| 13:30 – 14:10 | |
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| TRACK A | TRACK B |
Update from the UAEAI Regulation in the UAE: Balancing Competitiveness, Safety, and Trust Speaker: H.E. Prof. Saeed Aldhaheri, Director, Center for Future Studies, University of Dubai; President, Robotics and Automation Society, UAE. |
Update from Global SouthPerspectives on AI governance and digital capability beyond the EU, US and China frame, and what proportionate regulation looks like for developing jurisdictions. Speaker: Mohamed Shareef, Senior Advisor for Digital Transformation at Nexia Maldives and former Minister of State for Environment, Climate Change and Technology |
| 14:10 – 14:50 | |
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| TRACK A | TRACK B |
Update from SingaporeThe Model AI Governance Framework and AI Verify — operationalising testable, verifiable AI governance. IMDA Representative (Name TBC) |
Update from South KoreaUpdate from South Korea Implementing the AI Basic Act — the first comprehensive AI statute enacted outside Europe.
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| 14:50 – 15:30 | |
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| TRACK A | TRACK B |
When the Court Adopts AI: Inside Administrative JudiciaryThis session shares the judiciary's journey from judicial innovation to practical applications supporting judicial work, and the key considerations for the responsible use of AI in the judicial environment: what belongs in a courtroom, what must remain with the judge, and what other justice systems can take from the experience. Speaker: To be announced
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Update from Portugal: The AI Act Lands at the National RegulatorPortugal has designated ANACOM, its communications regulator, as the national supervisory authority for the EU AI Act. Its Chairwoman gives a first-hand account of standing up a member-state AI authority: supervising high-risk systems, coordinating with data protection and cybersecurity bodies, avoiding the legal uncertainty of overlapping rules, and what a regulator learns by using AI in its own operations. Speaker: Sandra Maximiano, Chairwoman, ANACOM, Portugal's National Communications Regulator
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Court decisions in the US, UK and EU are setting precedent faster than legislatures can respond — training data, opt-outs, fair use and the emerging licensing market. This session analyzes cross-jurisdictional litigation across the US, UK, and EU, examining shifting precedents on fair use, the practical limits of data opt-outs, and the rapid evolution of licensing frameworks for generative AI training data.
Speakers: Bojana Bellamy, President, Centre for Information Policy Leadership, Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP
A synthesis of the day's proceedings and the questions carried into Day 2.
Lord Chris Holmes of Richmond MBE
Dr Sepideh “Sepi” Chakaveh, Rapporteur, World AI Regulation Summit 2026
Day 2 opens on assurance, audit and compliance. Europe wrote the world's first comprehensive AI rulebook, then deferred its own high-risk obligations to late 2027 under the Digital Omnibus, even as prohibitions and general-purpose AI duties remain in force. The Act's Co-Rapporteur addresses what drove the pause, what it does and does not change, and what the first true test of risk-based regulation now teaches every jurisdiction drafting its own.
Keynote Speaker: Brando Benifei MEP, Member of the European Parliament; Co-Rapporteur of the EU AI Act
Voluntary assurance frameworks, regulator-led review or mandatory independent audits. This panel examines what credible third-party testing requires, who bears its cost, and whether assurance can keep pace with enforcement.
Panellists:
Moderator: John Howell, Founder, Dragon Network
| 10:30 – 11:30 | |
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| TRACK A | TRACK B |
Financial ServicesFIRESIDE CHAT Regulating AI, Using AI: Inside the FCAAI regulation in financial services, from the regulator's chair. The FCA's Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer discusses how the UK's conduct regulator approaches AI in the firms it supervises, and how the FCA itself is adopting AI inside its own operations: what a regulator learns about the technology by using it, and what that means for the rules it writes. Jessica Rusu, Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer, Financial Conduct Authority |
Healthcare Clinical Trials and AI governance
Speaker: Mehdi Snene, Chief AI Officer, UN AI for Health |
| 11:30 – 12:30 | |
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| TRACK A | TRACK B |
PANEL DISCUSSION: Out of the Rear-View Mirror: Should AI Regulation Police the Process or the Outcome?Financial regulation has always looked backwards: process-driven, evidence-heavy, built for a world that moved slowly enough to audit. AI moves at full speed through a busy village. This panel asks whether supervision must shift from prescribing how firms work to judging the outcomes they produce, bringing together a builder of AI compliance tooling, a market participant who has lived through regulation's last great catch-up in crypto, and the lessons of the fireside that precedes it. Moderator: Conny Dorrestijn, NED, Singer Capital Markets and Worldpay |
E-Government and Public SectorAutomated eligibility decisions, public-service chatbots and algorithmic transparency registers — accountability standards when the state itself is the deployer. Speaker: To be announced |
Practitioner “how to” training sessions, each led by a lawyer or an activist.
| 13:30 – 14:00 | |
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| TRACK A | TRACK B |
How to Build an AI Risk Register That Survives an AuditHow to establish a comprehensive AI use-case inventory, align with recognized governance frameworks (such as ISO/IEC 42001 or NIST AI RMF), and maintain auditable evidence like decision records, control checklists, and testing results. Speaker: Dr Mark Leiser, Academic, Author, and Technology Consultant; Riga Graduate School of Law/DigiData Consulting |
How to Run a Public-Interest Algorithmic AuditRunning a public-interest algorithmic audit involves systematically evaluating an AI or machine learning system for biases, harms, and transparency. Because platforms fiercely protect their source code, public-interest audits typically rely on external "black-box" testing methodologies, such as creating controlled experimental environments, querying APIs, or deploying audit studies to measure real-world outputs. Speaker: Reema Patel, Founder/CEO of Elgon Social and researcher based at the ESRC Digital Good Network |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | |
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| TRACK A | TRACK B |
How to Conduct a Conformity Assessment Under the EU AI ActConducting a conformity assessment under the EU AI Act requires developers of High-Risk AI Systems to evaluate compliance across key areas: risk management, data governance, technical documentation, transparency, human oversight, and cybersecurity. Providers must do this before placing their systems on the market. Sepaker: To be announced |
How to Build Community Voice into Data and AI GovernanceBuilding community voice into data and AI governance shifts the process from a theoretical top-down exercise to a democratic, transparent practice. It involves institutionalizing feedback loops, ensuring diverse stakeholder representation, and co-designing policies directly with the populations most affected by automated decision-making. Speaker: Jeni Tennison, Executive Director, Connected by Data |
| 14:30 – 15:00 | |
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| TRACK A | TRACK B |
Cross-Border AI Compliance — What Organisations Must Prepare ForOrganizations must inventory all AI exposure, implement privacy-preserving technologies (like differential privacy), and establish cross-functional governance frameworks to prevent severe financial and reputational penalties. |
How to Campaign for AI Legislation: Lessons from the FieldCampaigning for AI legislation requires building broad coalitions, mobilizing grassroots support, and engaging directly with lawmakers using clear, evidence-based policy proposals. By translating complex technical risks into relatable human impacts, advocates can successfully push for responsible artificial intelligence governance. |
Frontier AI is now a national security asset, an export-controlled technology and a battlefield capability at once — and the regulatory frameworks built for civilian AI were not designed to hold it. This session examines how governments are governing dual-use AI in practice: export controls on chips and frontier models, autonomous-systems oversight and human control, the cyber and bio dual-use risks raised at the 2026 G7, and where national security carve-outs in civilian AI statutes leave accountability gaps. A strategic-studies perspective on the sovereignty question made concrete.
Speaker: Dr. Elise G. Annett, Research Fellow, Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University
*The views expressed are those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense or the US Government
Nations are localising the AI stack: models trained, hosted and governed on national infrastructure, behind tightening cross-border data restrictions. The result is a regulatory map that is fracturing faster than it is converging, forcing organisations toward decentralised architectures built to satisfy each regime they touch. This session examines what genuine AI sovereignty requires in compute, data and capability, which jurisdictions are achieving it, and whether the next phase of global AI regulation leads to interoperability or fragmentation.
Speaker: Dr. Sepideh "Sepi" Chakaveh, Course Director and Lecturer in Data Science, University of Oxford; Rapporteur, World AI Regulation Summit 2026
Final remarks from the chair, publication timeline for the proceedings document, and invitation to the next annual edition of
the Summit.
Speakers:
*The agenda is subject to change. Content, speakers, and timing will be updated periodically. Please check back regularly for the latest updated agenda.
