EU Member States have committed to working together to ensure that the digital transition has a positive impact on women, agriculture and culture during Digital Day on Tuesday 9 April in Brussels. This event also provided an opportunity to review current initiatives, including those related to artificial intelligence.
‘Digital Day’, which brings together policy makers and stakeholders to discuss Europe's digital future, is organised by the European Commission under the aegis of the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU. The 2017 event, held in Rome, Italy, launched cooperation on high-performance computing, while the 2018 event, held in Brussels, focused on artificial intelligence (see EUROPE 11752/7, 11999/6).
‘Digital Day 2019’
This year, three themes were on the agenda: women, culture and agriculture.
- Strengthening women's participation in digital technology: Twenty-four Member States (all except Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia and Hungary) and Norway have committed themselves to work together to increase the position of women in the digital economy. In particular, the signatories have undertaken the development of a national strategy in this area to encourage companies to combat discrimination at work on the basis of gender and to promote balanced participation of both sexes in councils, committees and bodies dealing with digital issues. Women currently represent 52% of the European population but occupy only 15% of jobs related to information and communication technologies (ICT). See the statement: https://bit.ly/2IrX78S.
- Building a smart and sustainable digital future for agriculture and rural areas in Europe: Twenty-four Member States (all except Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia and Denmark) have co-signed this declaration in which they undertake, inter alia, the establishment of a Europe-wide innovation infrastructure and the creation of a European data space for smart agri-food applications. Their action is based on the observation that rural areas represent 80% of the EU's territory, as Commissioner Mariya Gabriel pointed out, but that only 47% of these areas have high-speed broadband connectivity. This is the case even although digital technologies can help to address important economic, social, climatic and environmental challenges in agriculture and rural areas.
- Digitisation of cultural heritage: Twenty-two Member States (all except Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Germany and Greece) and Norway are committed to advancing the digitisation of antiquities, monuments and heritage sites, as well as to promoting citizen participation and cross-border cooperation. The joint declaration, which particularly emphasises the European Year of Cultural Heritage, suggests the use of 3D technology to model data and knowledge and store them in a European directory.
Digital Single Market: Twenty-eight initiatives out of 30
These three declarations complement those signed last year by all Member States on artificial intelligence, by 20 Member States on personalised medicine and by 27 Member States on blockchain.
The day also provided the European Commission with the opportunity to take stock of its Digital Single Market Strategy, launched in 2015. Vice-President Andrus Ansip welcomed the adoption of 28 of the 30 initiatives proposed by the Juncker Commission as part of the strategy for a digital single market. However, he did not dwell on the two initiatives still pending, which are unlikely to be adopted before the European elections. These are, firstly, the proposal for a Regulation on the confidentiality of electronic communications, for which the EU Council's position is still awaited (and is expected to arrive in June) and, secondly, the proposal for a Regulation on centres of competence for cybersecurity, on which interinstitutional negotiations were suspended after three meetings at the request of the EU Council, in order to seek further clarification.
Ethical dimension of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence, the focus of the 2018 event, was briefly addressed from the perspective of ethical issues, after the High Level Group had submitted its report to the Commission the day before (see EUROPE 12231/10). Group Chairman Pekka Ala-Pietilä reiterated that artificial intelligence should be a means to achieve well-being by maximizing benefits and minimizing risks, not an end in itself.
This approach is supported by the Czech Deputy Minister for New Technologies, Petr Očko, according to whom “our watchword should be trustworthy artificial intelligence by default”.
The Dutch Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, Mona Keijzer, invited participants to think differently about technology and look to the future so that Amazon and Alibaba are not the only two remaining players. She raised the question of autonomy and encouraged caution with black box algorithms, those algorithms that make decisions in a non-transparent way.
The Italian Under-Secretary for Economic Development, Andrea Cioffi, and the Polish Minister for Digitisation, Marek Zagórski, both stressed the potential of AI in an ageing society.
It should be recalled that, on the previous day, several stakeholders had reacted to the publication of the guidelines for ethical artificial intelligence, such as Digital Europe (which participated among the experts), which welcomed the result, and ACCA, the World Association of Accountants and Auditors, which particularly supported the human-centred approach, the consultation process chosen, and which also called for these discussions to be conducted internationally. For the guidelines, see page: https://bit.ly/2IjQYf6. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)