The UK rolls back controversial plans to open up text and data mining regulations • TechCrunch

The U.K. Government is seemingly backtracking on plans that would have allowed text and data mining "for any purpose," plans designed to position the U.K. as a "global AI superpower." The news emerges following months of blowback from creative industries concerned about what impact the rules might have on protected works. Text and data mining, for the uninitiated, is an essential component of just about every AI application, allowing researchers and developers to leverage disparate datasets to train their algorithms. But gaining access to a sufficient amount of data is not a straight-forward endeavor, given that data is often owned by organizations or individuals that might not want third-parties to have access to their data. Or, they may only make said data available under a commercial license, making it prohibitively expensive to harness.