What is Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) enables intelligent machines to assist people, business, governments, and researchers to solve the world’s most pressing challenges. Artificial Intelligence is helping society to fight fake news and hate speech online, reduce water and pesticide use, reduce commuting time and pollution, improve access to education and healthcare, and reduce poverty and hunger in the world.
What Artificial Intelligence needs to succeed?
To unleash the benefits of this technology, Artificial Intelligence and algorithms must be trained to better understand and interpret information. Text and Data Mining (TDM) techniques underpin AI development. Machines learn by analysing very large amounts of data allowing them to better recognize, understand, adjust, and respond. Ensuring a large amount of varied data is available for analysis, is crucial to develop successful Artificial Intelligence systems and avoid bias.
Open access to data is essential to keep up in the current development of AI models
The negotiations of the Artificial Intelligence Act have revived a debate about the access rights to data used to train Artificial Intelligence algorithms, with calls to limit access and use of data that is used to train Artificial Intelligence.
We believe that governments need to maintain the right balance between protecting copyright and rightsholders’ productions to stimulate the development of AI-based innovations in Europe. The current exceptions on Text and Data Mining included in the 2019 Directive for Copyright in the Digital Single Market allows all Europeans, public researchers, and commercial entities to perform text and data mining activities on materials they have lawful access to. These exceptions are essential for the development of successful AI systems.
As the global development of AI systems is accelerating, many governments in the world have understood the link between access to data and AI, as well as the essential role that AI plays in the digitalisation of their industry. European innovators and researchers need an appropriate framework which enables the access to open data to compete with other countries in the global development of AI.