EU v AI: New European Regulation Could Anger Tech Big Shots

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), approved at the end of April and scheduled to enter into force in 2018, does not only deal with EU citizens' privacy. That means that all EU citizens will be able to ask to know the rationale governing companies' algorithmic decisions. As an Oxford paper explains, this is theoretically a good thing: exposing the workings and criteria behind algorithmic behaviors can help to ensure that such criteria are fair and not, for instance, informed by discriminatory ideas. However, a little bit of hand-wringing on the techie's part is understandable: explaining why an AI algorithm acts the way it does is not only an industrial secret, it is also very hard, given the intrinsic complexity of machine-learning technology.