Big Tech to Face More Restrictions in Europe on Data, AI -- 2nd Update
February 19 2020 - 10:45AM
Dow Jones News
By Valentina Pop
BRUSSELS -- American tech companies will soon need to meet new
requirements in the European Union regarding artificial
intelligence and sharing data with smaller rivals, as the bloc
seeks to assert its "technological sovereignty" from the U.S. and
China.
EU regulators unveiled plans Wednesday aimed at placing more
restrictions on machine learning-enabled technologies in fields
ranging from public surveillance cameras to cancer scans and
self-driving cars.
The legislation, to be drafted by the end of 2020, is also
likely to home in on what the EU has learned from antitrust cases
against Alphabet Inc.'s Google and ongoing probes into Amazon.com
Inc. and Facebook Inc.: how these platforms allegedly use data to
quash smaller rivals. These technology giants -- which some U.S.
politicians such as Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth
Warren want to regulate as public utilities -- are in the firing
line of the coming EU legislation.
One remedy under consideration is to oblige platforms to share
data with smaller rivals, especially when it comes to consumer
behavior regarding the products sold by those competitors.
Spokespeople for Amazon, Google and Facebook declined to comment
on the proposals.
EDiMA, an industry group representing big platforms including
Google, Amazon and Facebook, welcomed the proposals as a "starting
point" and said it would engage with the European Commission, the
EU's executive body, to address some of the shared concerns.
Liability rules regarding the content shared on online platforms
are also due to be spelled out in the Digital Services Act by the
end of the year. EU Commissioner Thierry Breton said Monday that a
pledge by Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg to accept a degree of
liability for content posted was insufficient, because he didn't
address the issue of dominant platforms having responsibilities
toward smaller players on the platform.
The rules will also come with new restrictions for U.S. and
Chinese companies that develop machine-learning-enabled
technologies, particularly when they handle sensitive data such as
medical records or facial images.
Restrictions are likely to be placed on the use of facial
recognition tools for mass surveillance, to limit the number of
individuals targeted. Human oversight and disclosure requirements
on which data sets are used by AI will be put on all companies
operating in the EU.
The European Commission said Europe was behind the U.S. and
China in terms of consumer-oriented applications and platforms.
However, it hopes to attract public and private investments of
EUR20 billion ($21.6 billion) a year in a bid to keep up in the
industrial and public sectors with the use of big data and AI.
"We recognize we missed the first battle, the battle of personal
data," Mr. Breton said. "Europe has everything it takes to lead the
'big data' race, and preserve its technological sovereignty."
If a technology tested in Europe proves to be too opaque or
fails to comply with the rules in place, regulators may order the
company to reboot the AI and make it learn from scratch based on
different data before rollout.
In December, EU Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager was
promoted to a dual role of enforcing competition law and shaping
new rules for the tech sector. After fining Google over $9 billion
for anticompetitive behavior over the past three years, Ms.
Vestager admitted that fines weren't working and a broader
regulatory approach was needed to change the behavior of big
tech.
"We have the fines to punish past behavior, we have the 'cease
and desist' to stop what you are doing," she said, adding that the
commission was considering several remedies to restore
competition.
One measure under consideration is for platforms found guilty of
anticompetitive behavior to be ordered to share data with smaller
players, so that the marketplace rebounces after anticompetitive
behavior, she said.
Another option being considered is ensuring that companies have
access to analytics about the online behavior of their customers --
data that is held but not always shared by platforms who host their
business.
Ms. Vestager said she had been approached by representatives of
the financial sector who complained that they have data-sharing
obligations that big platforms didn't. Discussions about
establishing reciprocity in data-sharing obligations between
platforms and the financial sector were at a very early stage, she
said.
"She has learned that data is the fundamental issue and that
what she's done so far has not worked," said Thomas Vinje, a
partner at law firm Clifford Chance. Regulating how platforms use
data "is the natural thing to do, but how this will be done still
needs to be defined."
Write to Valentina Pop at valentina.pop@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 19, 2020 10:30 ET (15:30 GMT)
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