At Denmark’s Digital Top Meeting 2019, the Danish government presented a new Danish National Strategy for AI. The strategy aims to ensure that Denmark will have a human-centric and common ethical foundation for AI. Furthermore, it strives to help Danish companies grow by developing and using AI and ensure that the Danish public sector will use AI to offer world-class services for the benefit of citizens and organisations in Denmark.

To reach these goals, 20 concrete initiatives divided into four focus areas have been defined. All to reduce barriers for levering the full growth and development potential offered by AI.

The focus areas are:

1. A responsible foundation for AI.
2. Access to more and better data.
3. Strong competences and new knowledge.
4. Increased investments.

New technologies provide us with a lot of opportunities to do things better and we have to exploit these opportunities. However, new technologies such as artificial intelligence also pose risks. Therefore, we must insist that these technologies are built on Danish values. Values such as trust in each other and in the systems.

Tommy Ahlers, Danish Ministry of Higher Education and Science 

Danish Ministry of the Higher Education and Science

The strategy will supplement a number of existing equally ambitious strategies, including among others Denmark’s Digital Growth Strategy.

Denmark: the starting point for a responsible use of AI

Danish businesses are experienced frontrunners in digital knowhow, supported by world-class AI and machine learning research and a wealth of innovative start-up companies. This is one of the reasons why the European Commission continues to acknowledge Denmark as the most digital economy and society in the EU.

With Denmark’s new strategy for AI, the Danish government takes initiative to build on this foundation, paving the way for a number of business opportunities for Danish as well as foreign companies looking to co-innovate and apply new digital solutions.

The following are among the concrete initiatives included in the strategy:

• Implementation of ethical principles and initiatives for the development and use of AI, including increased legal transparency.
• Establishment of a free joint Danish language resource.
• Easier access to a broader selection of public data.
• Implementation of signature projects in the Danish public sector to test AI solutions.
• Strengthen effort to secure investments to Danish companies.

One of the best ways to use AI responsibly is for public and private sector institutions to collaborate. In Denmark, there is a strong tradition for such partnerships and Denmark has some of the best researchers within AI and machine learning in the world – for example within Natural Language Processing. This is one of the reasons why, companies like Eldor Technology from Norway has chosen to place their AI R&D activities close to one of the largest Danish universities.

Kristine Helen Falgren, Tech Special Advisor

Invest in Denmark

Click to read the original press release (in Danish).