Regulators promote the responsible use of data, creating legal pressures for those seeking to harness the benefits of AI.
The concept of artificial intelligence (AI) is not new, but the growth in computing power in recent decades, coupled with the availability of almost unlimited data-sets, has created the fastest-growing and most-invested technology sector to date.
At the same time, regulators remain resolutely focused on ensuring the responsible use and protection of data. The Information Commissioner’s Office has identified AI as one of its three strategic priorities and lists three distinctive aspects of big data analytics that can raise data protection implications. These are the new ways of using algorithms, the opacity of the processing and the tendency to collect and analyse all of the data that is available, often for new purposes.
Along with the seven key principles in the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), this raises a real tension with data-driven AI products and services and extreme care must be taken by businesses in that sector to ensure that they make GDPR compliance central to their development and deployment plans. With fines for breaches set at very high levels, this is a critical area that cannot be ignored.