Erik Wetter, a House of Innovation Assistant Professor and a member of the technical advisory group to The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, joined a panel of speakers including Max Tegmark at MIT, and Anders Tegnell, Swedish State Epidemiologist at the Bisnode Unleashed 2020 conference to address a range of questions related to data, analytics, automation, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

In speaking on the advantages and challenges of sharing data globally, Eric claimed that there is currently a lack of clarity about who is held responsible if data ends up being abused. ”The UN has actively been working in the field of data and disease outbreak for ten years,” Wetter said. “The tricky thing isn’t accessing the data – companies have valuable data and they are, in our experience, willing to help – but it comes with a lot of liability. Who gets sued?” Erik further pointed out that companies might see commercial risk in sharing data about their customers. “There’s also the issue of value,” Wetter said. ”You don’t want to give away something that might ruin or bankrupt your company.”

A report of the conference proceedings summarized the data trends mentioned there into eight groups: Corona data, Crisis data, Glocal data, Hopeful data, Ethical data, Collaborative data, Leading data, and Useful data. Its conclusion offered the following sentiment: “The future could be bright if we together make that our shared goal. Without thought leaders, we’ll have no beacon of hope to guide us through the gloom of these uncertain times.”