AI: Should machines be trained to unlearn?

The quantitative explosion in digital data stemming from the surge in Internet communication and the widespread use of sensors is today a major driver of business opportunities for companies. In this new world, a great deal of ink is being spilled on the subject of progress in'machine learning'. This increasingly common expression denotes families of algorithms which enable computer-aided systems to accumulate knowledge and intelligence automatically without being explicitly programmed to do so. Machine learning methods have applications in a wide range of fields including the manufacturing industries (process optimisation), the finance sector (risk management), the luxury goods and wider online markets (strategic marketing), defence (situational analysis) and in the biomedical sector (patient typology). However, 'machine learning' is far from foolproof and if applied to the economic or political field it looks certain to raise some major issues.