AI moves into the physical world as insurance leaders gather to tackle emerging risks

Artificial intelligence is rapidly moving beyond the digital realm and into the physical world, creating new liability, property and operational exposures that could test existing insurance products and underwriting models.

That fast-changing risk landscape will come under scrutiny at Insuring the AI Frontier: Liability, Risk and Product Innovation, a new Intelligent Insurer seminar taking place at the Westin Times Square, New York, on November 19. A senior line-up of insurance, reinsurance, broking, legal, technology and academic experts will examine how insurers can identify, quantify and ultimately transfer risks ranging from model failure and data leakage to bodily injury, property damage and systemic accumulation.

Among the senior industry leaders confirmed are David Vanalek, SVP, chief legal and compliance officer at Richmond National Insurance; Timothy J. Zeilman, global head of product ownership at HSB; Serene Davies, global head of cyber at QBE; Kevin Kalinich, intangible assets global collaboration leader at Aon; Craig Linton, cyber & tech product lead and underwriting manager, cyber risks at Beazley; Meghan Hannes, chief underwriting officer at K2 Cyber; and Katrina Hill, cyber security consultant at Gallagher Re.

They will be joined by experts including Daniel Schwarcz, Fredrikson & Byron Professor of Law and Distinguished University Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota Law School; Troy Bettencourt, VP of digital forensics and incident response at Unit 42; and Willis Research Network technology and AI risks research analyst Sonal Madhok and technology analyst Omar Samhan.

The event comes as insurers grapple with a fundamental shift in the nature of AI risk. The rapid deployment of AI across professional services, financial institutions, healthcare, manufacturing and technology is creating potential exposures within existing portfolios. At the same time, the growth of robotics, autonomous systems and other forms of physical AI raises the prospect of technology failures resulting not simply in financial or data losses, but physical damage, operational disruption and bodily injury.

One of the central questions will be whether AI could follow a similar trajectory to cyber insurance. The seminar will examine the lessons from more than a decade of cyber underwriting, including the challenge of identifying "silent" exposures within traditional policies, developing specialist coverage with limited historical claims data and building sustainable underwriting models as the nature of the underlying risk evolves.

Schwarcz will address this question directly in a presentation titled From Silent Cyber to Silent AI: What Cyber Insurance Can Teach Us About Underwriting AI Risk. He will explore whether AI risk is following the same evolutionary path as cyber and ask how confidently insurers can underwrite an exposure where meaningful claims history remains limited.

The physical implications of AI will also form a major part of the programme. Madhok and Samhan will examine the rise of physical AI and the accelerating deployment of robotics and autonomous systems, including how these developments could reshape traditional liability models and create new requirements around resilience, governance and insurance.

The seminar will then turn from identifying the risks to examining potential solutions. A panel of senior insurance specialists will consider how policy wordings, exclusions and coverage may need to evolve across cyber, E&O, D&O, tech E&O and professional liability. The discussion will also examine emerging affirmative AI coverage and AI warranties and debate what the next generation of AI risk-transfer products could look like.

A key issue running throughout the day will be liability. When an AI system causes harm, responsibility could potentially sit with the user, developer, software provider, model owner or the organisation deploying the technology. Understanding how that liability develops – and how insurers respond to it – will be critical as AI becomes increasingly embedded in real-world operations.

The event will also explore one of the industry's most difficult underwriting challenges: how to quantify and price an emerging risk when claims data is scarce, technology is evolving rapidly and legal and regulatory frameworks remain in development.

Insuring the AI Frontier: Liability, Risk and Product Innovation takes place from 10am to 3pm on November 19, 2026, at the Westin Times Square in New York.

Did you get value from this story?  Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.