Most people treat “working groups” like a footnote inside a big summit. That’s the wrong mental model. Keynotes are for visibility, headlines, and positioning. Working groups are for decisions, drafts, and the kind of structured output that actually gets reused after the event. If you’re deciding whether to attend, what pass to buy, or who to send from your team, working groups are often the real reason to show up.
In 2026, the gap between “AI talk” and “AI execution” is still huge. Everyone agrees on the big ideas. Almost nobody agrees on the standards, the risk controls, the accountability, or the practical steps that help teams ship responsibly. Working groups exist to shrink that gap. They push people into the uncomfortable work: aligning definitions, debating trade-offs, and turning messy reality into something actionable.
This is a clean explainer of what working groups do, who should join, what outputs to expect, and how to participate without wasting your time.
What Working Groups Actually Are
A working group is a structured, theme-focused team that meets with a purpose beyond discussion. Think of it as a drafting room, not a debating stage. The goal is to produce something concrete: a set of recommendations, a framework, a checklist, a playbook, or a shared set of definitions that other teams can use later.
The reason working groups matter is simple: AI in the real world creates coordination problems. Different stakeholders use different language, different risk thresholds, and different incentives. A working group forces alignment. It also exposes the real friction points early, before they become public failures.
If you walk into a working group expecting inspirational speeches, you’ll be disappointed. If you walk in expecting structured arguments, trade-offs, and a push toward usable outputs, you’ll understand why serious attendees care about these groups.
What Working Groups Do During the Summit
Working groups typically do four things that keynotes rarely do well.
They convert broad themes into narrow problems. Instead of “responsible AI,” a working group asks what responsible means in a specific context and what minimum controls should look like.
They collect reality from the field. People share what breaks during deployments, what users do that teams didn’t expect, and what constraints exist inside government, enterprises, and institutions.
They reduce reinvention. Without shared templates and reference points, every team wastes time solving the same problems from scratch.
They push drafting and consolidation. The best working groups end with someone writing, editing, and converting discussion into structured output, not just meeting notes.
If you want to “feel informed,” keynotes are enough. If you want to shape what gets adopted later, working groups are where you need to be.
Who Joins Working Groups
The strongest working groups are mixed. If they’re dominated by one type of stakeholder, the outputs become distorted.
Government participants bring the reality of compliance, procurement, and public accountability. Industry participants bring deployment experience and scale constraints. Startups bring speed, experimentation, and sharp problem framing. Academia brings evaluation rigor and technical feasibility checks. Civil society and domain experts bring harm awareness, accessibility concerns, and trust gaps that technical teams often miss.
A balanced room prevents fantasy outputs. It keeps the conversation grounded and forces trade-offs to be stated openly rather than hidden behind buzzwords.
Who Should Join and Who Should Skip
Here’s the blunt filter. You should join a working group if you can contribute at least one of the following.
You have real deployment experience in India and can explain what worked, what failed, and why.
You have implementation authority or influence, meaning you can actually drive adoption inside an organization, institution, or project.
You have a reusable framework, checklist, or template that others can adapt without needing you to hold their hand.
If you have none of these, you can still attend, but don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re “shaping outcomes.” You’re learning, observing, and building relationships. That’s still valuable, but it’s a different goal.
The worst use of a working group is showing up to “network” while contributing nothing. People notice. And it quietly damages your credibility because working groups are smaller and more memory-based than large sessions.
Expected Outputs and What “Good” Looks Like
Working groups often claim they’ll produce big outcomes. In reality, the best outputs are small, clear, and reusable. A working group output is valuable when another team can pick it up and apply it without needing a long explanation.
Common outputs you can realistically expect include:
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Clear recommendations that define what teams should do and avoid
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A reference framework that standardizes language, risk categories, and baseline expectations
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A practical playbook that maps steps for implementation, review, and monitoring
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A set of common failure modes and what controls reduce them
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A short repository-style summary of what has worked in practice and what hasn’t
A weak output looks like a long document full of general statements. A strong output looks like a tight, structured format that is easy to operationalize.
If you’re joining, optimize for helping the group produce something that can be executed, not something that merely sounds intelligent.
How to Choose the Right Working Group
Most people pick based on what sounds fashionable. That’s lazy and usually pointless. Pick based on your edge and your goal.
If you’re a founder, choose the group closest to your real deployment environment and customer type. If you’re policy-adjacent, choose the group where you can translate abstract rules into operational steps. If you’re a student, choose where you can learn a practical method and turn it into a portfolio asset.
Ask yourself three questions before you decide.
Where do I have ground truth that others in the room may not have?
What theme is closest to the work I want to do in 2026?
What artifact can I contribute or help draft so my participation is not passive?
This is how you avoid wasting time in rooms where you have nothing to add and nothing to take.
How to Participate Without Getting Ignored
Working groups reward contribution, not presence. You don’t need fame. You need signal.
Show up with a small, structured contribution. That could be a checklist, a simple framework slide, a table of risks and mitigations, or a short case-study summary of a real deployment. Even better, bring a “failure story” with lessons learned because those are rarer and more valuable than success stories.
During discussion, speak in specifics. Replace vague statements like “we need transparency” with concrete statements like “we need a user-facing disclosure, a logging policy, and a clear escalation workflow for incidents.” The moment you get specific, you become useful.
After discussion, volunteer for the unglamorous work: drafting, synthesizing, and editing. This is where influence actually happens. People who write the draft shape the output, and people remember them.
How Students and Early-Career Attendees Can Contribute
If you’re early in your career, you can still be valuable if you stop trying to sound senior and start trying to be useful.
Bring a structured summary of a theme, with clear bullets and real trade-offs. Offer to synthesize session notes into a clean draft. Create a simple “what teams can do next” checklist that converts discussion into actions. If you’re technically strong, propose a basic evaluation method or a practical monitoring approach that a non-research team can apply.
Your advantage is energy and output. Your risk is talking like an expert without evidence. Don’t do that. Provide structure instead.
Common Mistakes That Make Working Groups Useless
There are a few patterns that quietly ruin working groups.
People show up with vague opinions instead of concrete examples.
Participants try to win debates instead of producing drafts.
Attendees overclaim expertise and get exposed when asked for specifics.
Nobody volunteers to write, so nothing gets consolidated.
If you want to be taken seriously, behave like someone building an output, not someone chasing visibility.
Conclusion: Working Groups Are Where Real Leverage Lives
Working groups are not “extra sessions.” They’re the highest leverage part of a summit for anyone who cares about execution. They turn abstract AI talk into usable artifacts, shared standards, and practical guidance that teams can apply throughout 2026.
If you want the most value, approach a working group like a builder. Pick the right theme, show up prepared, speak in specifics, and attach yourself to output creation. That’s how you leave with credibility, relationships, and real momentum instead of just photos and a badge.
FAQs
What are IndiaAI Summit working groups?
They are structured theme-based groups where stakeholders collaborate to produce actionable outputs like recommendations, playbooks, and reference frameworks.
Who should join a working group?
People who can contribute real deployment experience, implementation authority, or reusable frameworks and checklists should join. Students can join by contributing structured summaries and drafting support.
What outputs can I expect from a working group?
Typically, you can expect practical recommendations, standardized frameworks, implementation playbooks, and structured summaries of what works in real deployments.
How do I choose the right working group?
Choose based on where you have ground truth to share, what aligns with your 2026 goals, and where you can contribute something concrete rather than just listen.
How can I participate if I’m not a speaker or founder?
Bring structure. Offer a checklist, synthesize notes into a draft, summarize trade-offs clearly, and volunteer to help produce the final output.
Are working groups worth it if I’m attending mainly to learn?
Yes, because they expose real implementation logic and trade-offs. Just be honest with yourself that your role is learning and supporting output creation, not “shaping policy” without contribution.