Last year was undoubtedly a whirlwind in the world of technology—both good and bad. Taking effect a little over a year ago, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) changed the way tech giants such as Google, Facebook, AWS, Apple, and others collect and use their consumers' personal data. To date, 89,271 data breaches have been reported by the GDPR Data Protection Authorities. Although GDPR appears to be an important move to increase security around personal data, there have been a growing number of tech companies, where data are key components to core functionality of their technology offerings/products, who have been negatively affected.
Let’s take a look at Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems, for example. In circumstances where AI is used by a financial institution as an automated decision-making system — say, in offering a home loan — a GDPR data privacy policy does not adequately address a subject’s “right to an explanation” to the “how” or “why” the subject was accepted or rejected for the loan. Because AI works through continually changing algorithmic logic and models, it will be difficult for these institutions to develop clear-cut language for compliance. Companies that use other trending technologies such as machine learning, data & analytics, virtual reality (VR) & augmented reality (AR), and cloud computing may also have similar issues regarding the accuracy of their explanations for GDPR compliance.
