Overview
Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming embedded within critical national infrastructure (CNI), including energy, transport, healthcare, telecommunications, water, finance and government services. Unlike previous waves of digitalisation, contemporary AI systems increasingly demonstrate autonomous, adaptive and agentic capabilities capable of influencing operational decisions, coordinating across systems and interacting with both human operators and other AI systems.
While AI offers significant opportunities for efficiency, resilience and predictive operations, it also introduces new categories of systemic risk. Existing governance approaches remain fragmented across AI regulation, cyber security, safety engineering and operational resilience, leaving important questions unanswered regarding accountability, escalation pathways, incident response, interoperability and oversight.
As governments and infrastructure operators accelerate AI adoption, there is a growing need to identify where existing governance mechanisms remain sufficient, where they require adaptation and where entirely new approaches may be necessary.
This roundtable brings together experts from government, academia, industry and civil society to explore these emerging challenges and identify practical priorities for future policy, governance and research.
Objectives The discussion aims to address:
• What are the most significant opportunities and emerging risks associated with AI integration into critical national infrastructure?
• Are existing governance, security and resilience mechanisms fit for increasingly autonomous AI systems, including considerations of sovereignty and strategic dependencies?
• What capabilities are needed in government and industry to support effective monitoring, reporting and incident management across the AI lifecycle?
• What should be the priorities for future research and policy setting, for to enable safe, secure and resilient AI deployment in CNI?
Expected Outputs The roundtable will produce:
• a synthesis of the key opportunities, risks and governance challenges associated with AI integration into critical national infrastructure;
• a set of priority areas for future research and policy development
• practical recommendations to strengthen resilience and operational readiness for policymakers, regulators and CNI operators with regards to autonomous AI systems and strategic dependency management; and
• opportunities for future cross-sector collaboration, knowledge sharing and partnership.