Data Innovation Summit 2018 : ethics and data sovereignty

It has now become a tradition for me to give some time back to the data science community in the form of a keynote at the yearly Data Innovation Summit organized by Philippe Van Impe.
Let’s first allow me to thank Philippe and the team of Digityser for their amazing work for Belgium’s data science community. I was very proud to organize the first meetup at newly opened Digityser (on ethic and artificial intelligence) and even prouder to be allowed to talk in front of this growing community at the 2018 Data Innovation Summit.

For my 2018 keynote I chose to first cover what had happened on the front of ethics since my 2017 talk and deal with data sovereignty. The years 2017 and early 2018 have been rich in events pertaining to data ethics. The Cambridge Analytica scandal alone was a “moment of truth” for many, revealing how much we are tracked and for which purposes our data is used (don’t forget to read my analysis here and there).

After this look back I went on to discuss our next challenge: data sovereignty. After defining the concept of “data sovereignty” I explained why owning data and not relying on third-party sources is instrumental and may actually be a question of survival for many companies, especially those in the media industry. The latter haven’t been used indeed to “talk” to their customers individually and in a personalized way. The biggest part of ther traffic comes from referral sites, especially Facebook and Google. Being dependent of the changes of Facebook and Google’ algorithms constitutes however a threat that should be adressed by any means for the long-term sustainability of your business. Some businesses have paid their dependence with their lives.

You’ll find above the presentation I gave. I hope you’ll enjoy it.
Don’t hesitate to comment on it.