IIT Madras will host an industry conclave on AI governance on Thursday, bringing researchers, industry representatives and policy experts together to examine how artificial intelligence systems can be measured for performance, safety and accountability before wider deployment.
The Industry Conclave on AI Governance 2026 is being organised by the Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI) at the Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI. Its central theme will be “AI Measurement and Governance”, reflecting the growing need to evaluate AI systems as they become embedded in industry and public life.
Prof Balaraman Ravindran, head of the Wadhwani School of Data Science and AI and CeRAI, said governance without measurement remained “a statement of intent, not a practice”. He said rigorous evaluation was needed to ensure that AI systems were fair, safe and robust.
The programme will include keynote addresses by Prof Gopal Ramchurn, professor at the University of Southampton and CEO of Responsible AI UK, and Prof Mohan Kankanahalli, Provost’s Chair Professor of Computer Science and director of the NUS AI Institute at the National University of Singapore.
Prof Ramchurn is expected to address the accountability challenges created by agentic AI, including the need to trace the actions of autonomous systems and mitigate associated risks. Prof Kankanahalli will focus on the difficulty of evaluating rapidly evolving AI capabilities, which can make existing benchmarks obsolete.
A fireside chat between Ravindran and Rahul Matthan, partner at Trilegal, will examine AI measurement and governance. Another panel will discuss AI and consumer rights, with participation from Citizen Consumer and Civic Action Group, Razorpay, the National University of Juridical Sciences and Google India.
The event will also showcase startups working on AI evaluation, observability, compliance and governance. CeRAI research, open-source tools and hands-on workshops on responsible AI frameworks will form part of the programme. A new research initiative will be launched and a paper will be announced at the conclave.
