"We are promoting a responsible, human-centric approach to Artificial Intelligence" 

Hoping to avoid a Hal 9000-like "I'm sorry Ursula, I can't do that", President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen set out the EU's plan for data and AI regulation, which will also hope to bring the U.S. tech giants to heel.  

A human-centric approach may seem like a buzz-phrase, but as our interviewee today pointed out, AI can have big or small impacts on our lives, so regulation needs to be flexible. You can read the whole interview by scrolling down.  

We also take a look at supply chains in Peru and Chile, and the effect the COVID-19 outbreak is having - even with some of China's smaller trading partners. You can watch Dan Collyns' report via today's Global Business Daily. 

And finally, Brexit has been in the headlines yet again - with Germany reporting falling trade with the UK, but the Netherlands reporting a sharp increase in firms moving from the UK to set up in the Benelux (and EU member) state.  

Not to be outdone, the UK government has announced its immigration 'points system'. We've explained it in a graphic at the bottom on today's emails, and you can see if you would pass with our own version of the test. It's just for fun, of course, but should give you a good idea of how the new system will work in practice. 

Happy reading,

Patrick Atack

Digital business correspondent

More bad news for the U.S. airplane manufacturer Boeing, after losing its place atop the ranks of airplane manufacturers, and almost a year since its 737 MAX aircraft was grounded pending an investigation into two crashes.

"Foreign object debris" has been found in fuel tanks of MAX aircraft waiting to be delivered. It is understood to mean manufacturing waste left behind during the production of the aircraft, according to Reuters. 

The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency said 78 companies moved from UK to the mainland-Europe state in 2019, double the figure that moved in 2018 and a "trend" since the 2016 Brexit referendum, according to the agency's Jeroen Nijland. 

German exports to the UK fell by more than 4% in 2019, to its lowest dollar figure since 2013. It's the fourth consecutive year trade fell between Germany and its fifth largest trading partner. This drop comes despite German exports overall actually growing by nearly one percent in 2019. 

Brotherly sports firms Adidas and Puma have both confirmed a hit to global sales figures in the first months of 2020, with the COVID-19 outbreak taking the blame. Adidas said its year-on-year sales in the period following Lunar New Year were 85% down in China in 2020. Both firms have closed stores in China, and have been affected by a drop in Chinese tourism, too. 

The European Commission unveiled its plans for a single European data market which would ensure artificial intelligence technology will take into account privacy and ethical concerns. The plans also call for data centres to be climate neutral by 2030. It also aims to rein in big tech firms, such as Facebook, Amazon and Google. 

President Donald Trump objected to U.S. proposals to prevent companies from supplying jet engines and other components to China's aviation industry, saying that security concerns should not get in the way of global companies buying U.S. products. "We're not going to be sacrificing our companies ... by using a fake term of national security," the President told reporters. 

Jaguar Land Rover has been forced to resort to packing suitcases with car parts as the COVID-19 outbreak continues to affect global supply chains. Ralf Speth, JLR boss, said "We are safe for this week and we are safe for next week and in the third week we have ... parts missing" adding that some parts have had to come via suitcase from China. Speth also lamented poor sales in China, sayng the virus has reduced the previously booming region to "zero" sales. 

Uber has closed a customer support office in Los Angeles, cutting nearly 100 jobs, and is moving others to Manila in the Philippines. It comes after the ride hailing app revealed it lost $1.1 billion in Q4 2019 and it sold its Indian food delivery arm to a rival firm. 

As nations cope with the spread of the Coronavirus,  the influence on global supply chains is causing problems much further afield. Case in point is Latin America, where China is a major trading partner. CGTN's Dan Collyns takes a closer look.

Xavier Priem is a Senior Research fellow at Bristol University and specializes in new technology and engineering innovation. He also sits on the UK 5G network working group, and talked to CGTN Europe about the European Commission proposals for a new data market and online framework. 

Is this proposal likely to take off?

Yes, I think so. It will be a long process, I think. What I've read so far is that people are focusing on this, you know, face recognition, which is just a small paragraph in this white paper. If you look at the real recommendation from the EU, which is mandatory space requirements for high-risk applications, which means that you select a certain focus where you will apply this regulation and it's mixed together with... Safety and liability. Of course, we need to have safe and liable AI systems and governance because you need to drive that. 

So I think that if you combine those three options together, it's something that is reasonable to propose to the member states. 

Now, as usual, with Europe, it will take time to agree on the details because it's a very, very difficult topic. So it's concerning data, it's concerning AI and application AI in daily life, which is not so easy because it can be very light [or] a very deep impact on it on us.

National governments' track record on trying to rein in the big tech giants has not been entirely successful to date. Is this going to be any different? 

Yeah, I think the tech giants today benefit from two supports, absence of enough regulation or reinforced regulation for the taxation and usage of data.

For example, if you even if you put GDPR in place; when you install an app on your phone, you ask: "Are you okay with those things?" And you say"yes" because you need the service. You say yes by default. 

So it does increase a bureaucracy around it. But at the end of the day, those tech giants are providing services. So you need to strengthen regulation and reinforce it better.

Is it a possibility that in post-Brexit Britain, Britain doesn't sign up for any of this? And that kind of makes a mockery of it, doesn't it? You then have a European country that isn't signed up to this European agreement. 

There are many systems already connected between the European community and the UK. Those systems would not be shut off immediately. So you have time to work to the end to understand what implications it would have not to sign those regulations. 

Secondly, in the UK there is good AI capacity, but there is no AI without data. So if you train all AI systems in the UK with data only from the UK, you will end up with systems that are very applicable in the UK, but maybe not in other countries. 

But it's not only about EU, it's about a data exchange or the capacity of letting your AI be trained in other countries to get results for those countries because you have specificities sometimes, sometimes you don't want. 

So there must be agreements between the states anyway to be able to export AI systems, AI services and being able also to welcome people from other countries and vice-versa. So I don't think that in being in isolation would help. But I don't think as well that it is just with the EU you need that it's with everyone in the world.

The EU says it wants to create a single European data market. What is that in practice? 

In practice, if you're inside one market, which in that case is the EU market, there are specificities and commonalities between the countries in this market. So you won't develop something in France that is working 100 percent in Germany and so on. So I think this single data market will lead to developing services that are exploitable within the EU.