According to this Oxford paper, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation law set to take effect in 2018 will outlaw machine learning, hindering AIs’ ability to make decisions about people based on collected information.
From Cade Metz’s coverage on Wired.com:
With a few paragraphs buried in the measure’s reams of bureaucrat-speak, the GDPR also restricts what the EU calls “automated individual decision-making.” And for the world’s biggest tech companies, that’s a potential problem. “Automated individual decision-making” is what neural networks do. “They’re talking about machine learning,” says Bryce Goodman, a philosophy and social science researcher at Oxford University who, together with a fellow Oxford researcher, recently published a paper exploring the potential effects of these new regulations.
Source: http://www.wired.com/2016/07/artificial-intelligence-setting-internet-huge-clash-europe/
Highlights of the law, as quoted in the Oxford paper:
Article 11. Automated individual decision making
1. Member States shall provide for a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces an adverse legal effect concerning the data subject or significantly affects him or her, to be prohibited unless authorised by Union or Member State law to which the controller is subject and which provides appropriate safeguards for the rights and freedoms of the data subject, at least the right to obtain human intervention on the part of the controller.
2. Decisions referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article shall not be based on special categories of personal data referred to in Article 10, unless suitable measures to safeguard the data subject’s rights and freedoms and legitimate interests are in place.
3. Profiling that results in discrimination against natural persons on the basis of special categories of personal data referred to in Article 10 shall be prohibited, in accordance with Union law
EU regulations on algorithmic decision-making and a “right to explanation” (PDF) by Bryce Goodman (BRYCE.GOODMAN@STX.OX.AC.UK)
Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford; and Seth Flaxman (FLAXMAN@STATS.OX.AC.UK), Department of Statistics, Oxford
Backup from Open Archives Initiative copy:
1606.08813v1.pdf