Europe

In an op-ed for New Europe, Eline Chivot writes that AI can actually help reduce gender bias and improve social fairness in Europe.

Discussions about job losses from automation tend to assume that innovation will overwhelmingly displace low-skill workers. But this view is misguided because it fails to recognize that low-skill jobs are the least profitable for companies to make obsolete.

France’s digital services tax, which other nations also are considering, represents a radical departure from current practice and would greatly complicate ongoing efforts by the OECD to negotiate changes to the international tax regime by 2020.

Daniel Castro writes for Euronews, Europe will be left behind in AI if it focuses on ethics rather than developing the best technology.

The UK can simultaneously promote data-driven innovations for all, develop the types of skills required for the digital economy, support the private sector’s use of data to increase productivity, and improve public services through appropriate sharing and use of data within government, as well as between government and the private sector.

One year later, there is mounting evidence that the law has not produced its intended outcomes; moreover, the unintended consequences are severe and widespread.

As Daniel Castro and Eline Chivot write for European Views, results of recent survey data show that the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)—which the EU has touted as the gold standard for data protection rules—has had no impact on consumer trust in the digital economy since it came into force last May.

China’s patent output has grown dramatically in recent years, both in terms of the volume of patents submitted for international protection under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) and in terms of the number of citations those patents receive, a standard measure of a patent’s importance. New research breaking down the sources of those citations raises significant doubts about whether the growth in Chinese patent citations is as meaningful as it appears.

By providing remote access to data storage, processing, and software, cloud computing lets firms easily scale their computing needs and avoid the large fixed costs of IT infrastructure, which allows small firms to operate and expand more efficiently. New research into cloud adoption by firms in the United Kingdom supports this reasoning.

While it may be tempting to focus on the direct job losses caused by robot adoption, it is wrong to conclude that automation constitutes a generalized threat to workers, either in manufacturing or in the broader economy. By choosing to automate, firms can increase their productivity, which allows them to expand and increase their employment.

Robots are key tools for boosting productivity and living standards, and companies around the world are putting them to use. But while Korea is the world’s largest adopter, with 710 robots per 10,000 workers, the United States sits at seventh, with 200 robots. Why does the United States lag behind?

As Rob Atkinson writes for Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Margarethe Vestager’s decision to veto a merger between rail companies Alstom and Siemens shows how preventing EU firms from merging will result in weakened and shrunken European competitors.