Data Amplified 2026: AI, trust and the next 25 years
Thank you to everyone who came to The Hague for Data Amplified 2026.
Much of the conversation, inevitably, was about AI. Joe Atkinson, PwC’s Global Chief AI Officer, was enthusiastic about its potential but clear that it needs proper controls around it: “One of the great powers of LLMs is that they will give you analysis. One of the great risks is that they will give you analysis with great confidence.”
Which is where trust comes in. Bianca de Jong-Muhren, Chair of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Chartered Accountants, observed that “we’re not just digitising data, we’re digitising trust.” The Netherlands is further along this road than most. Digital reporting, assurance, signatures and identity are starting to come together, and our co-hosts at XBRL Netherlands walked us through how this works across government. Much of the credit goes to agencies agreeing a common framework early and continuing to work together since.
Steven Maijoor, who chairs supervision at De Nederlandsche Bank, reminded us that standards exist to create shared understanding, and that “we must continue to invest in the foundations that make shared understanding possible.”
We agree, and that thinking lies behind much of the next generation of XBRL, still going by its working name, Project Tavi. Attendees had an early look, including demonstrations of AI and Tavi together taking much of the effort out of tasks from building taxonomies to analysing data.
XBRL International is 25 this year. In 2001 our tagline was “transforming business reporting,” and an astonishing amount of transformation has since been achieved. Our panellists expect the next 25 years to bring a lot more automation, machines talking to machines, finer-grained data, and analysis much closer to real time. We will see how they did at Data Amplified 2051!
We are very grateful for the tremendous support of our sponsors and of our partner this year, XBRL Netherlands. Thank you too to our speakers, and to all who attended. It was great to see the enthusiasm and innovation that is happening in digital reporting across the world, and we hope you came away feeling as energised as we are. The conversations continue!
