In this episode we talked to a prominent scientist from the data privacy field, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye. He is an assistant professor at the Imperial College London, leading the Computational Privacy Group. A lot of fascinating privacy questions came up about behavioral data, k-anonymity, differential privacy and meaningless privacy guarantees that mask true risks. We talked about the way forward and how true data privacy can be created in practical terms. Tune in for an enlightening conversation that puts a lot of greys into the seemingly black and white world of data privacy!   

The recently announced Transatlantic Data Privacy Framework will foster data flows between the US and the EU, addressing the concerns raised by the Schrems II. decision. The US-made an unprecedented commitment to strengthen the privacy protection applicable to US signals intelligence activities within the new framework. New safeguards will be implemented to protect citizens' rights while advancing cross-border data flows. The next step is to translate this framework agreement into legal documents that will be put into practice on both sides of the Atlantic. But what does this mean for data privacy in practice? What are the major challenges, and what can we expect in the long run? We spoke to J. Scott Marcus, Senior Fellow at the EU's economic think tank, Bruegel, about the history and future of transatlantic data flows. Read on to learn how synthetic data can solve cross-border data sharing!

We talked to an amazingly experienced and visionary test engineer to find out all about her challenges and inspirations. Alexandra and Maaret covered a lot of ground in the testing landscape, from everyday testing challenges to best practices and to visions of the future. According to Maaret, testing is about breaking illusions and we couldn't agree with her more. Testing is also like singing. Why? Tune in to find out! 

What does it take to create effective digital policies? Why does the AI Act only go half-way - and what else needs to happen to ensure meaningful regulation of AI? How could the EU and the US overcome the challenges of negotiating transatlantic dataflows? And why should the EU might consider to stop relying on the Brussels Effect and instead get down on the negotiation table? Tune in to this conversation with Andrea Renda, a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) and Advisor to the European Parliament, to learn more about the geopolitical battle on data, AI and digital policies.

What's synthetic data's future, and what's behind the synthetic data hype? This episode is all about synthetic data. We spoke to Tobi Hann, CEO of MOSTLY AI, the world's leading synthetic data company about the opportunities and challenges surrounding this important data tool. MOSTLY AI's recent Series B funding round is the biggest investment for synthetic data in Europe to date. What is synthetic data? It's an emerging privacy enhancing technology that enables privacy-preserving data usage, improves machine learning models and allows realistic testing. In short: a data democratization tool. Listen in to find out all about why the future is synthetic. 

To celebrate Data Privacy Day 2022, we talked to the godfather of GDPR, Paul Nemitz, about how bigtech threatens democracy, the role law can play in protecting people and societies from adverse effects of technology and why it's time to regulate AI. Tune in to learn more about the upcoming European AI act and find out what role synthetic data is likely to play in this regulated future! 

Axel Voss is  leading the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in the European Parliament. He's been working on a report outlining important policy recommendations for the upcoming European AI regulations. Among other things, Axel talked to us about:why the GDPR is due for an updatewhat the future of data protection holdshow the EU should compete globally in AI and digital innovationwhy access to high-quality data is so important how synthetic data can help bridge the gap between data protection and data-driven innovationswhat the upcoming European AI-regulation will look likeIf you would like to learn more about the legislative privacy landscape around GDPR and the upcoming AI regulations, listen to one of our previous conversations with Axel von dem Bussche, GDPR, the new European AI regulation, and the privacy landscape. 

Denis Rothman has been an AI practitioner since the dawn of this technology. Denis shares his ideas on the origins of explainable AI, its necessity, the way forward for model agnostic explainable AI and the challenges of natural language processing. 

What does the future hold for the insurance industry? In the latest episode of the Data Democratization Podcast, our host, Alexandra Ebert talked to David Marock, a seasoned insurtech, fintech and proptech expert from London. David shared his insights on the state of AI in the insurance industry and what are the current trends developing in the insurtech space. In this episode you will hear about AI opportunities in insurance, why traditional insurance companies are tech hesitant, how to overcome the tech inertia in insurance organizations, how regulatory pressure is changing minds about digital transformation, why fairness is critical for insurance companies, how synthetic data solves data access and privacy issues, what to do about less tech-savvy business leaders and why the future of insurance will be driven by new technologies. 

Take an organizational deep-dive into the topic of responsible AI with Maria Axente, PwC's Responsible AI lead! You'll hear lots of hands-on advice for decision makers looking to make their company's AI adoption a success from hiring decisions, organizational structures and the new AI mindset of pause and reflect.