Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland · BGF Conference at Interop Tokyo 2026
Addressing the BGF Conference at Interop Tokyo 2026, Professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland — of MIT and Stanford, a board member of the Boston Global Forum, and honored among the fifty America 250: AI Pioneers — set out the foundations of trustworthy artificial intelligence. Drawing on his research, he argued that trust rests on three questions that grow urgent as autonomous AI agents begin to act on our behalf: identity — who, or what, are you truly dealing with, and where did it come from; permission — how others can verify that a human genuinely authorized an action, and meant it; and predictability — how to ensure a system does what is expected, rather than something unbounded. These are no longer academic concerns, he stressed, but immediate priorities for finance, trade, health, and security — the sectors where trust must be established before AI can be safely embraced. Citing the recent United States–China agreement to develop joint guidelines for safe trade, Pentland observed that nations are awakening to the need for shared standards of trusted AI. Already working with major financial institutions across the United States, the European Union, the Middle East, India, and Singapore, he invited Japan and its leading companies to build those standards together. Those very standards lie at the heart of the AIWS Trust Infrastructure and AIWS Trust Standards — the architecture of the AIWS Trust Order proclaimed in the Tokyo Compact.
▶ Watch the address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZAGnstcZVc
