US Companies Must Deal with EU AI law, Like It or Not

Don't look now, but using Google Analytics to track your website's audience might be illegal. That's the view of a court in Austria, which in January found that Google's data product was in breach of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) as it was not doing enough to make sure data transferred from the EU to the company's servers in the US was protected (from, say, US intelligence agencies). Well for those working in AI and biotech, it matters, especially to those working outside of Europe with a view to expansion there. For a start, this is a major precedent that threatens to upend the way many tech companies work, since the tech sector relies heavily on the safe use and transfer of large quantities of data. Whether you use Google Analytics is neither here nor there; the case has shown that Privacy Shield -- the EU-US framework that governs the transfer of personal information in compliance with GDPR -- may not be compliant with European law after all.