The future for next-generation AI in the EU

The onset of next-generation Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications in Europe presents new regulatory challenges with respect to technologies deemed to present risks to the existing legal framework, rights, and ethics. The scope of potential challenges is broad, with many AI technologies already featuring prominently in our everyday life: algorithms deciding on the fate of our loan applications, recognising faces on public streets, flagging potentially illegal content online, targeting adverts to individual profiles online, estimating the outcome of elections, and even being employed across warzones the world over, as a means to highlight areas of potential hazard and risk. The use of algorithms to supplement human intelligence received a boost at the turn of the Millenium, with the onset of machine learning devices and the realization among technologists that'Big Data' could be taken advantage of in predictive mechanisms, effectively providing machines with the vast intelligence required to conduct complex real-time decisions. In this vein, of vital importance to the operation of AI technologies, is access to and utilisation of data streams. While the EU has strict safeguards on the use of personal data for this cause, as part of its General Data Protection Regulation, it is now seeking to harness the power of industrial data sharing as a means to boost competitiveness with other global players in the field of data-driven innovation.