In the policies promoted by the European Union, an intimate connection between artificial intelligence and open data has been considered. In this regard, as we highlighted, open data is essential for the proper functioning of artificial intelligence, since the algorithms must be fed by data whose quality and availability is essential for its continuous improvement, as well as to audit its correct operation. Artificial intelligence entails an increase in the sophistication of data processing, since it requires greater precision, updating and quality, which, on the other hand, must be obtained from very diverse sources to increase the quality of the algorithms results. Likewise, an added difficulty is the fact that processing is carried out in an automated way and must offer precise answers immediately to face changing circumstances. Therefore, a dynamic perspective that justifies the need for data -not only to be offered in open and machine-readable format, but also with the highest levels of precision and disaggregation- is needed.

In the light of the UK's new industrial strategy and budget, as well as the ODI's recent participation in a House of Lords evidence session around how AI and personal data should be owned, managed, valued and used for the benefit of society, the ODI's Head of Technology Olivier Thereaux examines our work in this area. Artificial intelligence (AI) is currently enjoying a renaissance in industry and popular imagination, and in the most recent UK government budget. AI's popularity can be partly explained by the fact that, for the first time, we have enough large-scale data for training AI systems. There are public datasets for computer vision, natural language, speech and many more non-public datasets within businesses and governments. Recent improvements in hardware are also making it more cost-effective to train and run machine-learning models.