15 Feb Europe’s Data Privacy Rules Could Give Artificial Intelligence a Global Headache

Photograph by Agliolo Mike — Getty Images/Photo Researchers RM
Companies experimenting with artificial intelligence technologies may find it challenging over the next few years, as they expand their operations in Europe. That’s because by May 2018, tough new European Union rules related to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into effect and could pose problems for companies that rely on gathering and processing user data for their businesses.
At a panel on data privacy at the annual RSA cybersecurity conference in San Francisco, Cisco (CSCO, 0.00%) chief privacy officer Michelle Dennedy explained that companies—from sports brands to pharmaceutical corporations—are gathering more data than ever from the influx of Internet-connected devices now wired into their IT infrastructure. And the problem is that the upcoming regulation is especially tough on what’s known as profiling, which is essentially the ability for companies to use automation to determine certain characteristics of their individual users.
Read more from: Fortune.com