Enterprise Ecosystems

DTW26 Impressions: Establishing trust in AI through collaboration

DTW26 Impressions: Establishing trust in AI through collaboration

Given that Digital Transformation World tends to focus more on the software side, it will be of minimal surprise that AI dominated the majority of the presentations and discussions at the show.

Despite the relentless hype, it does seem that the telecoms sector has started to read the room a little about the potential pitfalls of AI. The importance of trust was underlined continually, with TM Forum Chairman Steffen Roehn describing telcos as the ‘trust layer’ of the AI economy, while CEO Nik Willets highlighted the discrepancy between how much operators trust their AI agents versus how much they’re able to demonstrate this to a regulator. It seems this gap will need to narrow before operators can become truly AI-native.

Amongst enterprises and indeed consumers, there is some scepticism about the wisdom of unleashing a raft of AI agents into the network and letting them enact their decisions unsupervised. As autonomous networks are increasingly becoming a reality, operators are keen to emphasise the degree of human oversight and accountability that will still be involved in any agentic scenario – in fact, the concept of ‘knowing your agent’ becoming as important as knowing your customer became a refrain that I heard several times throughout the show.

AI sovereignty was also high on the agenda. As legislation begins to start catching up to the pace of AI’s evolution, enterprises need to know where their data is located, who’s operating it, and which legislation covers it. Data is the fuel for AI growth, and operators worldwide are realising that if they’re to achieve scale with AI, their data needs to be clean and clearly located to be ready for AI agents.

While autonomous networks may be the goal for the industry, many were keen to emphasise that human talent will remain at the forefront – reports of the AI job-pocalypse, it seems, have been greatly exaggerated. What’s important is not the technology’s capabilities so much as how it is used – and these decisions rest with skilled engineers and strategists, who will be required in every facet of a business.

It makes sense that TM Forum would focus on collaboration; while its constituent members of course compete with each other, the AI era demands an agreed set of rules – and its in everyone’s interest to influence these standards as it will help the industry scale at speed. As AI has progressed from natural language interaction to agentic capability, it has become clearer that a cooperative ecosystem based on transparency and collective responsibility will be essential to ensure trust in the technology – from all stakeholders.



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