Keynote: The Trust We Build: Earning Our Way to Autonomous Grid Operations

Every utility leader knows the grid is being asked to move faster than it ever has. Fewer name the real constraint. It is not technology, and it is not capital. It is trust. An operator will not act on advice they cannot see inside. A regulator will not approve what they cannot audit. A security team cannot defend a system that acts in ways no one can trace. In a business where a single wrong move can darken a city or start a fire, trust is what enables the utility to move at the speed of Agentic AI.

Joseph Santamaria learned that from two chairs. For nearly a decade he was a utility CIO, helping provide power to 4M customers. Today he leads Energy and Utilities at AWS. From both seats the lesson is the same: AI earns its place on the grid the way a young engineer does, by proving itself one decision at a time. In this keynote he reframes the industry's loudest debate, augmented versus autonomous, as a staircase you climb rather than a choice you make. He shows which work is ready for autonomy today and which still needs a human in the lead, grounded in the Agentic Grid Planning on AWS program. Each step up gives software more authority, and more reason for an attacker to target it. That is why security has to climb with every step. Augmented first is how we earn the autonomous grid we actually want.

Sponsored by AWS