GDPR ‘must be tweaked’ to become more applicable to AI

Wayne Grixti, chairman of the Malta.AI Taskforce tells BusinessToday: “Certain aspects of GDPR must be looked at and revised to become more applicable to AI applications”

Malta.AI Taskforce chair Wayne Grixti
Malta.AI Taskforce chair Wayne Grixti
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Certain provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), must be tweaked to become more applicable to Artificial Intelligence applications, the chair of the Malta.AI Taskforce has revealed.

Speaking to BusinessToday, Wayne Grixti said that “certain aspects of GDPR must be looked at and revised to become more applicable to AI applications.”

Europe’s almost year-old law tightened the rules on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the EU bloc and since AI applications have to feed on large chunks of data to grow and be successful, certain provisions GDPR which regulate data collection and consumption are in direct conflict with such technology.

Asked if GDPR is facilitating an unlevel playing field for Malta and UE countries who have to compete against AI savvy states like China who are not bound to follow similar thorough legislation, Grixti said that states like China have a big advantage in harnessing data.

Parliamentary Secretary for Digital Innovation Silvio Schembri
Parliamentary Secretary for Digital Innovation Silvio Schembri

However, he emphasised that this way only beneficial to developers and not the citizens.

“In our case,” he said, “GDPR is a bulwark for EU citizens.”

Grixti also said, “that the Taskforce and the government are currently discussing the possibility of future amendments to this law.

On the other hand, Keith Strier, Ernest and Young’s global Advisory Leader for Artificial Intelligence indicated that the future of AI might look beyond ‘big data’ demands.

Keith Strier, Ernest and Young’s global advisory leader  for artificial intelligence
Keith Strier, Ernest and Young’s global advisory leader for artificial intelligence

“Although in some AI applications having  more data is important and more valuable this is not true for all applications,” he told BusinessToday.

Strier emphasised that “some of the latest scientific cutting edge development enable AI models to get smarter when trained on fewer data.”

Quizzed on this issue, Parliamentary Secretary Silvio Schembri recounted how similar obstructions were present during the drafting of the first regulatory framework for distributed ledger technologies (DLT).

 “Since this was an EU wide act, they took some time in discussing it, unfortunately, they failed to include considerations of other technological developments which were happening at the time such as blockchain. Which some of its fundamentals go against GDPR,” said Schembri.

However, “he insisted that this does not mean that we will stop the economic process. We went from one extreme to another. Looking at the future, especially with AI, 5G and the internet of things there must be some tweaking in GDPR. We are full members of the EU and we will discuss such issues, laws are there to be amended and adjourned to the present time, ” expressed Schembri.

Last week experts and leader in the field met up during a public consultation workshop on the newly released Malta.AI strategy Which will see Malta becoming a will be a disruptor, not just follower on Artificial Intelligence.

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