The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Innovation Summit will dedicate July 29th to “Accelerating the Digital Economy through AI and Quantum,” bringing together leaders from Anthropic, IBM Research, and IonQ alongside federal agencies and standards developers. The conference, held in Denver July 28-31, will focus on how standards can foster the rapid development of artificial intelligence and prepare for the coming quantum era. Rohit Israni, founder and CEO of CertientAI and chair of AI Standards US (INCITS), will open the AI session, setting the stage for discussions on managing risks from frontier AI and the implications of autonomous agents. “Standards are the critical infrastructure of the digital economy,” said ANSI president and CEO Laurie E. Locascio, Ph. D., NAE, emphasizing the summit’s goal of shaping the future of these technologies, particularly within Colorado’s growing quantum cluster.
AI and NIST Frameworks Address Frontier Model Risks
The accelerating pace of artificial intelligence development is prompting a concentrated effort to establish risk mitigation frameworks, as evidenced by the dedicated programming within ANSI’s Innovation Summit on July 29th. A key element of this response is the development and implementation of standards, described by Laurie E. Locascio, Ph. D. Following her remarks, Craig Schlenoff, Ph. D., chief of the AI Research, Measurement, and Standards Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will contextualize the rapidly evolving AI landscape. A newly approved framework for the most advanced general-purpose AI systems will then be examined in detail by a panel moderated by Chris Meserole, executive director of the Frontier Model Forum. Panelists including Jesse Dunietz, Ph. D., computer scientist at NIST, and Kim Lucy, director of governance, risk, and compliance standards at Microsoft, will contribute to this critical discussion.
The summit will also address the unique risks associated with “agentic AI”, autonomous systems capable of independent action, and the standards needed to govern them. August Gweon, policy counsel at Anthropic, will moderate a panel featuring Kyriakos “Rock” Lambros, CEO and founder of RockCyber, alongside experts from the Cloud Security Alliance and IBM Research. This exploration of autonomous systems highlights a shift in focus from AI that suggests to AI that acts, demanding a proactive approach to security and governance. Locascio emphasized this point, underscoring the forward-looking intent of the summit and its commitment to responsible innovation.
What No Single Company Can Build: The Shared Foundations of a Quantum Industry brings together Chris Monroe, Ph.D., co-founder of IonQ and Gilhuly Family Presidential Distinguished Professor at Duke University; Andrew Wilson, Ph.D., acting chief of NIST’s Time and Frequency Division and lead of its Quantum Information Science Program; and Yoonchae Cheong, Ph.D., director of the Korea-U.S. Quantum Technology Cooperation Center.
