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If you are using ML to make automated decisions for say insurance risk then you will have to say so explicitly. There is a pay-off for a customer to agree, and

If you are using ML to make automated decisions for say insurance risk then you will have to say so explicitly. There is a pay-off for a customer to agree, and that is convenience. If all insurance companies are doing this then a customer will likely have to consent, or not get a fast insurance decision out of hours that they seem to want. I think the big difference under GDPR is that the user will be able to request that the decision is made by a human, but if this is the case they will not get to set up their insurance at 10PM for tomorrow morning like they can in the automated system. It is completely reasonable that a customer would have to wait a couple of days for this. In practice I wonder if insurance companies (for instance) are actually doing a live ML evaluation on customers, or do they just use ML to develop some 'bandings' that they fit you in to? They could still do this of course, because they can use anonymous data to build a model. I don't see where the competitive advantage you mention lies? Yes a company in the US could use ML on US citizens, but not EU ones. Presumably a company in France could set up a server in AWS US-West region and do ML on US citizens, but not EU citizens? Surely it is a matter of where the data-subject lives, not where the company is based?

downandout 8y ago
I don't see where the competitive advantage you mention lies? Well, if you can't perform ML on data about the population that is most accessible to you, you are at a competitive disadvantage to those who can. I can't think of many EU companies that control large amounts of data on US citizens. Though I'm sure they exist, there are many more US companies that would have larger volumes of data on US citizens.
- jimnotgym 8y ago
  So you are arguing that US firms operating in the US are in competition with UK firms operating in the UK? I don't see how they are in competition at all?
  - downandout 8y ago
    Humans are humans, regardless of what country they live in. If I have a larger dataset than you, and I can do more things with it, then I can predict human behavior in a given situation better than you can. That gives me a competitive advantage over you. I may be able to then go compete with you in the EU without ever having to violate the ML provisions of GDPR, because I know what humans - whether in the EU or US - will do. Granted, there are some country-specific behaviors that this will not apply to, but then nobody will be finding out what those are in the EU because it's now illegal to do there.

downandout 8y ago

I don't see where the competitive advantage you mention lies? Well, if you can't perform ML on data about the population that is most accessible to you, you are at a competitive disadvantage to those who can. I can't think of many EU companies that control large amounts of data on US citizens. Though I'm sure they exist, there are many more US companies that would have larger volumes of data on US citizens.

jimnotgym 8y ago
So you are arguing that US firms operating in the US are in competition with UK firms operating in the UK? I don't see how they are in competition at all?
- downandout 8y ago
  Humans are humans, regardless of what country they live in. If I have a larger dataset than you, and I can do more things with it, then I can predict human behavior in a given situation better than you can. That gives me a competitive advantage over you. I may be able to then go compete with you in the EU without ever having to violate the ML provisions of GDPR, because I know what humans - whether in the EU or US - will do. Granted, there are some country-specific behaviors that this will not apply to, but then nobody will be finding out what those are in the EU because it's now illegal to do there.