By akademiotoelektronik, 09/01/2023

The new challenges of digital sovereignty and artificial intelligence

The subject of sovereignty returns regularly in the news that affects tech.The Gaia-X project outing is the perfect example.It is also enough to observe the actions taken by the French state to build a cloud for sovereign industry, to realize the importance that this subject took.

The problem of sovereignty also arises, quite naturally, for artificial intelligence.All these fields share the issue of control and data protection, the data being indeed necessary to accelerate the digital transition that Europe must start and it is important to be able to keep control of it.

What is digital sovereignty in a world that wants to be globalized?

We can define the digital sovereignty of companies as the fact of making users, software or computer tools which do not critically depend on third -party players, in order to avoid conflicts of loyalty.This refers to the mastery and protection of digital technologies of each player in its market.It is important to recall that everyone must remain master of their data, their uses and their purposes.

This question goes beyond the borders of France to embrace the European project as a whole.For example, news highlighted the fragility of production, supply, availability of raw materials, through the global health crisis, thus revealing the importance of the sovereignty of states in many sectors, including thetechnology and digital.

This subject has experienced an acceleration since the European Commission, through the highly commented project to regulate applications based on artificial intelligence, displays its desire to promote a confidence and excellence loud and clear.Finally, this would make it possible to support strategic sectors such as health, transport, manufacturing processes and energy.These areas cannot afford to depend on technologies and infrastructure which cannot be controlled in their entirety.

Sovereignty is everyone's business

Sovereignty raises the question of data belonging and the responsibility which is the responsibility of the entities that process data, those of individuals, companies and state institutions.The issue of sovereignty is also posed in the field of intellectual protection of our European know-how.

Multicultural Europe and its GDPR project must find its place between the Gafami and Batx projects.It should be noted that these multinationals offer, most of the time, artificial automation and intelligence systems based on very gourmet (often personal) machine learning models which can therefore pose concerns of confidentiality in connection withData protection.

The health crisis, as we have already mentioned, has crucially highlighted the risk of economic dependence on other countries outside the EU.It engages a general awareness of the importance of keeping a certain sovereignty favoring our independence and our economic development.

Concretely, it is important that digital partners (start-ups, publishers, ESN, operators, etc.) selected in future projects, in particular in the field of AI, are guaranteed the independence of their customers and data ingeneral.The choice of an AI must be made on technical criteria, but also ethical: namely compliance with private data, accommodation of data in Europe and finally the explanability of the decisions of algorithms.

In innovation, balance is essential, between digital protection of our freedoms, and openness to a globalized world.