Dreamforce 2026: Trust moved to the centre of enterprise AI debate

The useful part

Dreamforce 2026: A question of trust | Computer Weekly Home Business applications Chris Anderson. stock.adobe.co By Brian McKenna, Enterprise Applications Editor Published: 25 Sep 2026 12:15 A spectre of trust haunted last week's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. The supplier behind the conference, Salesforce, has long vaunted its trustworthiness as a software-as-a-service provider.

How it works

• Putting it colloquially, "how can we trust those guys?", described appositely by The Financial Times ' chief political commentator as "overgrown children", in an episode of the Political fix podcast.
• Data protection and consumer trust are the key to unlocking AI, says Miriam Everett, partner Herbert Smith Freehills.
• but the benefits will remain elusive unless the public sector changes its approach to data strategy, says Matt Harris, managing director for UK, Ireland, Middle East and Africa at HPE.
• That also includes how we tackle responsibility, accountability, trust and the like at a time of velocity, uncertainty, ambiguity, volatility.
• Brian McKenna Search CIO CIOs looking for ways to say yes to the iPad in the enterprise CIOs are looking for ways to say yes to the iPad in the enterprise, despite the technological and cultural challenges...

What to take from it

"All these topics of trust, risk, responsibility, accountability, ethics, are really coming to the fore now. "I've always firmly believed that the greatest risk is the unexamined status quo," he said. How to make AI better at defense The agentic AI playing field was heavily tilted toward offense, so researchers began using red team agents to help teach their...

Example or evidence

• New research shows how security scanners embedded in the software supply chain can be attacked to serve as a foothold for...
• AI's energy and latency demands are driving infrastructure toward the edge -- closer to users,...
• It is in its DNA, and it's a pioneer of software as a service, founded in 1999, when the concept seemed borderline eccentric.
• Marc Benioff put the vexed question of trust to Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in a fireside chat at Dreamforce.

Details worth keeping

In a press session entitled "The Trust Imperative", Lindsey Finch, executive vice-president of global privacy, product, artificial intelligence (AI) and cyber security legal, noted that when she started at the company in 2008, "cloud computing was not used as a concept as yet. All the customer conversations, all the policy maker and regulator conversations came down to: 'you want me to hand over all my data to you?' That seems somewhat quaint now, in 2026, now that cloud computing is the industry standard. Altman said he was "very confident in our company's ability, our industry's ability, to do this [AI development] safely to make sure that we keep alignment and safety", but that he was "disappointed about how [the discussion] has been framed".

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