The Anonymous Big Data workshop was organized in the context of the ANonymous bIg daTA (ANITA) project. ANITA aims to systematically examine and validate the feasibility of using artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning to generate synthetic data that preserve individual privacy as well as retain enough substantive and statistical information to ascertain its usefulness for market(ing) research purposes.
The goal of the workshop was to explore the topic of Synthetic Data from multiple perspectives and to create a collaborative dialogue around the following questions:
1. Opportunity: Which type(s) of privacy-sensitive data assets are of interest for (market) research?
2. Utility: What are requirements with regard to accuracy and representativeness for synthetic data?
3. Legal: Which legal frameworks are to be considered for synthetic data generation?
4. Trust: What is required to establish trust in synthetic data or other forms of privacy preservation (e.g., data minimization), in terms of accuracy and privacy?
5. Communication: How are data synthetization and other forms of privacy preservation perceived by the general public?
6. Ethics: Are there other ethical questions, aside from privacy, with respect to synthetic data?
The workshop was conducted in the form of a carousel brainstorming, also known as rotating review, where 23 experts (divided into small groups) rotated through six topic-specific „stations“ and discussed the above mentioned questions for a short period of time.
The workshop results: