EU Commissioner M. Gabriel to DTF participants: “Digital trust is an essential value in democratic societies”

As our world becomes more digitized with smart (and) connected products and services day by day, data privacy, security and trust are immensely important. A digital trust framework to enable these aspects is important and necessary. Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, emphasizes: “Digital trust concerns us all, it is indeed an essential value in democratic societies.” Therefore she stressed the importance of consensus building and norm setting in the fields of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet of Things at the launch of the Digital Trust Forum in Berlin. “I was genuinely impressed by the level of ambition that [the Digital Trust Forum Participants] demonstrated in the course of the event and the discussions in an area that concerns us all”, so Gabriel. The forum contributes (e.g. by pilot projects in the fields of hydrogen technologies, AI and connected and automated mobility) significantly to the creation of trust around digital developments in the EU, notably with regard to AI. It is addressing the challenges how international organizations in industry can pool together and find solutions, through the establishment of a trust framework, and what concrete actions can be taken, for example, in relation to governance and certification “in a remarkable way”, the commissioner confirmed. 
Further on, she underlined the importance of bringing industrial stakeholders together to help boosting the trustworthiness and security of Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence. Because “trust is a crucial element of a reliable AI and it is a cornerstone of the European Union itself” the Commission has published a whitepaper on Artificial intelligence: “The paper seeks the right balance between an AI, that is a driving force of innovation and an AI that is human centered and ethical desirable.”