[Speech] Thomas Le Bonniec at “Fight for Us, not for them”

Thomas Le Bonniec was invited to speak on the 23rd of June, to the “Fight for Us not for them” event, held in Brussels, by organizations opposing the deregulation push on digital rights and especially the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

His presentation drew on Cecilia Rikap’s theory of digital dependency to argue that four main flows of data and knowledge currently move from the EU to the US for AI training purposes. Le Bonniec and Rikap argues that the Digital Omnibus (a series of amendment to the RGPD aimed to weaken it’s regulatory constraint) is going to accelerate these flows, and backfire on any innovation and digital sovereignty goals that have been set by European Institutions.

The LeakyLM project, directed by the IMDEA Networks Institute, revealed that there were hidden data transfers when using the interface of 4 of the most commonly used LLMs. An other projetc in wich Le Bonniec is currently working and whose results will be released after the summer, has studied the behiavour of one work platform for “AI training” and found no fewer than 16 trackers on it.

These flows are actually feeding directly into the AI for military use sector, as the same clients of this platform are engaged with the US department of war.

Through his presentation, Thomas Le Bonniec suggests a few answers to the question : So what is there to be done, as the digital omnibus will accelerate the demotion of the EU into a digital periphery from which data and knowledge are extracted?

Specifically on his last slide, where he suggests recommendations to repel modifications on articles 4, 9, 12, 13, and 88, of the GDPR, and embedding into law at the very least the algorithmic justice principle.

He also argues that consent should be the sole legal basis for using personal data for AI

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