AI Has a Big Privacy Problem And Europe's New Data Protection Law Is About to Expose It

"Artificial intelligence" technology is on a roll these days, but it's about to hit a major blockage: Europe's new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The privacy law, which came into effect across the EU on Friday, has several elements that will make life very difficult for companies building machine learning systems, according to a leading Internet law academic. "Big data is completely opposed to the basis of data protection," said Lilian Edwards, a law professor at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. "I think people have been very glib about saying we can make the two reconcilable, because it's very difficult." Machine learning--the basis of what we call AI--involves algorithms that progressively improve themselves.