Organisations investing in trustworthy artificial intelligence (AI) measures are 15 times more likely to report strong or high returns on their AI investments, according to a new SAS report featuring research insights from IDC, with Southeast Asia emerging as the strongest-performing region for AI trustworthiness.
The second annual Data and AI Impact Report: The New Economics of Trust found Southeast Asia was the only market surveyed to outperform the global benchmark across all five dimensions of trustworthy AI.
The region’s Trustworthiness Index climbed 8.8 points to 66.5 in 2026 from 57.7 in 2025, while its AI “Trust Gap” — the difference between perceived trust and demonstrated AI reliability and safety — narrowed sharply from 14.6 points to 6.6 points.
Improvements were recorded across all five measures, led by Model Governance & Oversight, which rose 14 points to 64.2. Audit & Accountability increased 11.3 points to 70.5, Data Quality & Governance gained 10.7 points to 66.7, Responsible AI Policy rose 9.8 points to 71.2, and Explainability & Fairness improved 6.5 points to 63.7.
SAS CTO Bryan Harris said organisations need to combine domain expertise with human governance as increasingly autonomous AI systems are deployed.
“When AI works, it’s incredibly impactful,” he said, warning that state-of-the-art AI agents can still record error rates exceeding 25% on complex tasks.
Despite Southeast Asia’s progress, the report highlighted a growing disconnect between AI ambition, infrastructure and financial returns.
Advanced AI maturity in the region rose 20.5 points, compared with an increase of just 4.1 points in infrastructure maturity. Meanwhile, 65.6% of organisations plan a small increase in AI spending over the next 12 months, while 14.8% expect a large increase.
Stronger trustworthiness has also yet to translate consistently into higher returns. Southeast Asia’s Impact Index slipped to 58.0 from 58.3, while the proportion of organisations reporting strong or high ROI fell to 28.7% from 36.7%.
Employee confidence remains another hurdle. Some 37.8% of respondents in Southeast Asia said AI recommendations were overridden because of insufficient explanations, while 37% cited a lack of situational context.
Oversight could also struggle to keep pace. Despite improvements in the Audit & Accountability score, the proportion of organisations conducting regular AI audits or impact assessments plunged to 21.3% from 47.3%.
SAS Vice President for Customer Advisory Deepak Ramanathan said Southeast Asia’s next challenge is converting its gains in AI trustworthiness into measurable business outcomes while maintaining visibility and control as autonomous AI expands.
The global study surveyed 2,699 decision-makers across 28 countries, covering banking, insurance, life sciences and the public sector. Southeast Asia comprised respondents from Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
