Tallinn, 16 October 2018 – today, Prime Minister Jüri Ratas and Rene Tammist, Minister of Entrepreneurship and Information Technology, discussed the issues of artificial intelligence, data, and trade with heads of delegations of the Tallinn Digital Summit 2018.
According to Prime Minister Jüri Ratas, countries must make better use of the possibilities of artificial intelligence and data management, at the international level as well. “The importance of artificial intelligence to cross-border trade and export of service in particular is continuously increasing, as it already enables us to view many current processes much more accurately,” said Ratas. “It is also clear that artificial intelligence cannot be developed without the access to large amounts of data. At the same time, we must ensure the security of data and privacy in processing of data.”
Prime Minister Ratas also believes that Europe should also make better use of the potential of data management. “Free movement of data flows should constitute the fifth basic freedom for Europeans. We must work together to find and remove the obstacles in the way of using artificial intelligence and movement of data flows,” said the prime minister. Usage of data for developing better services is becoming an increasingly important issue in Europe and around the world. For example, in the European Union, the Digital Europe programme with an estimated budget of nine billion euros is in planning for 2021–2027.
According to Rene Tammist, Minister of Entrepreneurship and Information Technology, Europe and Estonia have the sufficient capacity for putting data into better use and the goal should be to reuse and share collected data and take public data into wider use, among other things, through interfacing of information systems. “The more data can be used for analysing and for drawing up forecasts with the help of artificial intelligence, the more useful artificial intelligence is. The potential of developing and using artificial-intelligence-based technological solutions for benefitting the society is huge. For example, prevention of traffic accidents or health risks would be a good practical output for artificial intelligence,” explained Tammist.
At the Summit, Andrus Ansip, Vice President of the European Commission, provided an overview of the latest developments in Europe regarding the digital internal market, data, free movement of data, and trade. In the course of a discussion on data trade, research fellow Hosuk Lee-Makiyama from the European Centre for International Political Economy made a presentation to the heads of delegations.
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