Will the GDPR frustrate Europe's plans for AI?

The European Commission says that the EU could become the most attractive, secure and dynamic data-agile economy in the world. The Commission's new data strategy is for the EU to seize new opportunities in digitised industry and business-to-business artificial intelligence (AI) applications. However, the Commission has scrupulously avoided the vital question of whether GDPR is an obstacle to the EU's plans to become an AI hub. The European Commission announced its new EU data strategy with the publication of two papers in February 2020. These were a white paper on AI and a communication entitled, "A European strategy for data". The Commission acknowledges that "the availability of data is essential for training artificial intelligence systems … without data, there is no AI."