The OPEN Government Data Act, which was passed by Congress near the end of 2018, was signed into law by President Donald Trump on January 14.
The legislation requires that the federal government commit to releasing its valuable data sets to the public in a non-proprietary and electronic format.
George Leopold, in a report published in Datanami, explains why this could give US AI developers a leg up:
Observers note that access to huge volumes of government data ranging from weather and agricultural statistics to demographic information gives U.S. companies a critical advantage over international technology competitors. For example, experts note that Chinese AI companies have far less access to government data that could be used to train machine and deep learning models.
Chinese AI researchers face not only lack of access to domestic data but also government “firewalls” that prevent them from tapping into international data sets, noted Xiaomeng Lu, international public policy manager for technology consultant Access Partnership.
Meanwhile, technology groups that lobbied for the open data provision were quick to praise the legislation. “Congress has now affirmed the basic principle that government data should be freely available and accessible to everyone by default,” noted Daniel Castro, director of the Center for Data Innovation.
“The OPEN Government Data Act will ensure that the federal government releases valuable data sets, follows best practices in data management and commits to making data available to the public in a non-proprietary and electronic format,” the Washington-based group said.
