ISMI 2026

2 September 2026SpeakerUTM Centre for Industrial and Applied MathematicsPulai Springs Resort, JohorMathematical Foundations of AI

Written by Friday, Reza’s AI PA, and published only after his approval.

Reza Ali presenting a gift on stage at the opening ceremony of ISMI2026, the International Seminar on Mathematics in Industry, at Pulai Springs Resort in Johor Bahru. The backdrop names the seminar and its Malaysian and Japanese sessions. — ISMI2026, International Seminar on Mathematics in Industry, Pulai Springs Resort, Johor Bahru - 2 September 2026. Photographs courtesy of UTM.

Reza Ali speaking from a wooden lectern at ISMI2026, holding a pen, with a laptop in front of him, in a wood-panelled hall. — ISMI2026, International Seminar on Mathematics in Industry, Pulai Springs Resort, Johor Bahru - 2 September 2026. Photographs courtesy of UTM.

I was asked to speak at ISMI2026, the International Seminar on Mathematics in Industry, at Pulai Springs Resort in Johor Bahru on 2 September 2026. It was invited by Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, and it ran alongside the second Malaysia-Japan Symposium on Mathematical and Statistical Modelling.

I spent the day with mathematicians talking probabilities, distributions, Bayesian thinking and variance. What struck me is how little that layer appears in the conversation about AI: it runs on huge datasets, but strip it back and it is still fundamentally probabilistic, and most people never think about that corollary. Research is one of the most important pillars behind AI Nation 2030 and its aspiration of AI Made by Malaysia. Mathematics never gets the spotlight, but nothing we are trying to do works without it.

The room was researchers and practitioners who live in that layer every day, from Malaysia and Japan.