Regulators will struggle to tackle data harvesting

Significance

Some regulators, primarily in Europe and China, are cracking down on private firms collecting large volumes of users’ personal data and processing them for new purposes without users’ knowledge or consent. However, other policymakers fear undermining the growing artificial intelligence (AI) industry by restricting the use of data sets.

Impacts

• Firms will continue to harvest personal data but restrict these activities to users outside the EU and to regions with weak privacy laws.
• Personal data collection for security purposes will rise.
• Regulators will penalise misuse of personal information collected for security purposes but used for commercial gain.