Boon and bane of AI endeavors

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) must be advanced responsibly and develop new value-added potential for the benefit of society. That’s why the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into play since data is the key ingredient for AI applications. The GDPR impacts any law globally in terms of creating a more regulated data market and especially Article 22 should be looked at since it generally restricts automated decision making and profiling.

The dilemma is that the amount of data to be processed by AI must be high to gain proper results, but at the same time the protection of personal data must be guaranteed. Evidently, GDPR is only a first step in this regard, because in the future national laws should specifically regulate the use of personal data in the case of AI—without neglecting data protection.

Currently, China and USA are seen as the leaders in the use of personal data for AI purposes, which is attributed, among other things, to the large amount of data available and collected. Both countries make the processing of personal data legally easy: there is massive data collected by the U.S. government and by the Chinese government due to their “social scoring”.

However, the GDPR forms a reliable legal framework for innovative technologies and applications, including AI. It contains regulations for the protection of individuals when processing personal data as well as the free movement of such data. The revision of the e-privacy regulation is intended to round off this protection concept.

In everyday business life, AI is particularly relevant in connection with machine learning and process optimization. In 2016, for instance, the self-learning app AlphaGo attracted attention after defeating a human grandmaster by analyzing millions of board games. The fact is that with slight modifications, the app could also be used outside...