US Needs Privacy Standard Like GDPR, Alphabet’s Pichai Says

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, said in a recent interview that there would be a need for new regulations, specifically for privacy standards similar to what is in place in Europe, along with a need for the U.S. to stay competitive in various key areas, a Monday (Oct. 18) report from Tech Crunch said.

Pichai said the latter item was particularly important as China’s tech world has been further estranged from Western ones.

In recent months, China has undergone a tech crackdown and introduced new regulations to curb monopolies, cut down on customer data collection and make new rules for data security.

Pichai said he thinks U.S. needs to stay ahead especially in areas where the U.S. and China compete, in things like artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and cybersecurity. The European Union enacted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which governs data security and privacy.

“The government has limited resources and it needs to focus,” noted Pichai, “but all of us are benefiting from foundational investments from 20 to 30 years ago — which is what a lot of the modern tech innovation is based on, and we take it for granted a bit.”

He suggested the government could play a key role in policies for such things and “bring in the best talent from anywhere in the world, or participating with universities and creating some of the longer-term research areas.”

Pichai also addressed the increase in cyberattacks around the globe, saying that there needed to be some kind of “Geneva Convention equivalent” for the cyber world and that governments needed to prioritize security and regulation. He also said there would be a need for new federal privacy regulations rather than “a patchwork of regulations in states,” which he said could make things more complex than necessary.

In other cybersecurity news, healthcare fraud has been seeing some positive news with using AI to help detect fraud, waste, and abuse (FWA).

Read more: Artificial Intelligence is ‘Shining Star’ in Fight Against Healthcare Payments Fraud

PYMNTS’ report says that by using the new technology often utilized in other industries, the healthcare industry has begun coming out of its worst FWA troubles, with 100% of health insurers with over $1 billion in revenue planning to invest in AI in one to three years.