Feature: Israel strives to keep up with regulations to fit cutting-edge technology

Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-21 03:45:21|Editor: Mu Xuequan
Video PlayerClose

by Nick Kolyohin

JERUSALEM, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- During the DLD high-tech conference, Israeli officials said they are working on adjusting the country's regulation to fit the cutting-edge technology.

DLD Tel Aviv innovation annual conference attracts each year thousands of participants, startups, high-tech companies, investors and officials from around the world.

Around 110 delegations and over 4,000 participants from across the world took part in the convention, while more than 100 startups presented their innovation at the digital festival held from Monday to Thursday.

The Chairman of the conference Yossi Vardi said that the purpose of the event is to give startups a free opportunity to meet big companies, capital ventures, and journalists throughout plenty of activities and events sponsored by the organization.

Israel's goal now is to smoothly integrate its innovative technologies into the economy and to enable the hi-tech industry to secure its global leadership in new areas of activity.

Daniella Partem, head of the Israeli Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (C4IR), said during the event that Israel has a high potential to lead the global regulation in the new era of cutting-edge technologies.

Those challenging technologies include digital health, smart mobility, artificial intelligence, big data, and more fields.

C4IR's goal is to try to keep up with the speed of the emerging technologies that are much faster than the regulation.

The government is lagging behind the technologies and sometimes it could be a very big gap between them, according to Partem that is preparing to deal with the challenge.

Ami Applebaum, chief scientist at Ministry of Economy and Industry and also chairman of the board of the Israel Innovation Authority, said that regulation is a big burden to the innovation.

"One of the most painful points today in the high tech and digital revolution is the issue of regulation," Applebaum told to the audience.

Regulation is something that can cost a company a billion-U.S. dollars fine because of privacy compromise or restrictions of some technologies, according to Applebaum.

Applebaum stressed that the aim is to coordinate the regulations with innovative companies in the early stages of development.

Murat Sonmez, managing director of the World Economic Forum, is responsible for the forum's global technology governance initiative called C4IR Network.

Sonmez sees a future where the biggest technology companies, such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, will be economically stronger.

Moreover, some of the global challenges would need a joint effort.

"A lot of governments are saying we don't want you to monetize our people's data, so data is staying in our country," said Sonmez.

But this approach could be bad for some countries which lack enough data to come up with new measures, including looking for new treatments against cancer.

"Artificial intelligence is too early to regulate. And we don't want to regulate it too soon, because we don't want to block it", said Sonmez.

TOP STORIES
EDITOR’S CHOICE
MOST VIEWED
EXPLORE XINHUANET
010020070750000000000000011105091384090221