Dr. Lundbæk, your company Xayn is developing an AI solution for data rooms as part of MISSION AI. Can you explain to us what data rooms are and why they will be so important for companies in the future?
In a nutshell, data rooms are virtual, secure places where documents and data can be exchanged. Data rooms are important for companies because AI innovations require a lot of data - often even more than an individual company has available in a usable form. However, to ensure that individual companies can still obtain data for AI innovations, they can use data rooms to exchange data securely and purposefully. This also means that both the individual company and the economy benefit from secure data rooms, since they are essential for enabling AI innovations.
Your solution promises to make data exchange between companies more secure and efficient. How exactly is this supposed to work and what are the specific benefits for companies?
Companies cannot simply exchange or use any data in data rooms. The data must meet high quality and compliance requirements. Until now, it has been quite complicated to ensure that these standards are met. With the joint project between MISSION KI and Xayn, we are now tackling this problem head on: We are developing a new type of AI application that automatically highlights in real time when compliance requirements or existing regulations are breached during data exchange. This will greatly simplify the exchange of data between companies, make it more secure and at the same time promote AI innovations.
MISSION KI is an initiative to strengthen Germany as an AI location. How does your project fit into this bigger picture and what opportunities do you see for the German and European economy as a result?
We've probably all heard that data is “the new gold”. Even if the phrase is a little worn out, it's still true that good data and lots of data make many innovations possible in the first place. If we make data securely and productively accessible to more companies with our project, we will also promote new AI developments - which we urgently need here. The global AI race is already in full swing, and Germany and Europe are unlikely to make an impact if everyone just tries to cook their own soup. That's why initiatives such as MISSION AI and our data room project are fundamentally important: we are laying an important foundation here so that companies in Germany can exchange data securely and drive AI innovations forward, so that ultimately everyone benefits from this and from each other.
Your AI solution is designed to ensure compliance with various EU regulations such as the Data Act, the Data Governance Act and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). How do you manage to translate these complex regulatory requirements into a practicable technical solution that supports companies in exchanging data?
When exchanging data in data rooms, it is currently still the case that the data exchange itself does not sufficiently check whether compliance requirements or relevant regulations are being adhered to - for example, whether requested health data is anonymized. The AI solution that we are currently developing for MISSION KI monitors in real time whether relevant regulations and requirements are being adhered to in the data room. To do this, we train our own AI models with data on the relevant regulations such as the GDPR, the Data Governance Act, etc. You can imagine it all like this: First, various stakeholders agree to exchange data via data rooms. They also agree on the compliance rules that apply to the respective data room and set these parameters via the user interface. When data is requested, our AI system, specialized in regulations, kicks in. The AI solution then automatically checks whether all requirements are met. If everything fits, the requested data is delivered.
You could have started your company in Silicon Valley. What made you decide to set up and stay in Germany instead?
At the time, we made a conscious decision to found Xayn in Germany and to stay here - out of a strong identification with European values such as the protection of digital privacy. We want Europe to be able to position itself as an important player in the global AI competition - and in our eyes, it's not just about going higher, faster and further, but about specifically answering the question “What is really needed?”. At the same time, we also have to say that we would have completely different basic requirements in Silicon Valley than here in Germany. Some things would probably have been easier for us there. But that's why we hope that it will also become easier to implement innovative ideas in practice in Germany - and we are actively working with MISSION AI to make this possible.
When you look to the future: What vision drives you in the development of this technology? How do you see the role of trustworthy data spaces in tomorrow's society?
When I look into the future, I see great challenges and opportunities. I have been working intensively with AI for many years - first from a scientific perspective and then with practical implementation. And yet I've been amazed at the rapid development over the last year or two. But that spurs me on even more to do everything we can here in Europe to develop secure and privacy-preserving innovative technologies. And as technical as it may sound, trusted data rooms play an important role in this. This enables companies to securely, compliantly and reliably exchange the data they need for AI innovations.
Imagine we meet again in 5 years' time and your project was a complete success. How will the handling of data in Europe have changed by then and what would that mean for people's everyday lives?
It's not Christmas yet, but if I could wish for one thing that our project would have changed in five years, it would be this: Germany and Europe will be a major player in the global AI scene, bringing economic benefits to society and being able to showcase pioneering secure AI innovations - which were made possible by our work on secure data spaces, among other things.
