Interview with Khalid Choukri

What are your tasks in the European Language Data Space project?

ELDA is responsible for designing both the infrastructure and data product governance of the LDS. The objective is to establish a robust legal and sustainable framework that promotes efficient, fair, transparent and trustworthy operations of the LDS within a user-friendly environment. This includes designing application forms, reviewing and evaluating submissions by the participants, managing acceptance and rejection processes and facilitating their onboarding. The goal is to ensure that legal entities joining the LDS meet specific requirements, such as being based in the EU. A second aspect is to offer support and assistance to participants, enabling them to exchange data sets cost-effectively with the necessary legal and technical support. 

Furthermore, ELDA’s work covers the supervision of data protection compliance within the LDS, targeting an infrastructure that implements data protection by design and by default in its core components. In parallel, stakeholders are accompanied to ensure data protection compliance of their datasets; for this purpose, they can solicit the LDS legal helpdesk for non-binding advice and guidance on GDPR principles as well as other legal compliance issues.

Finally, ELDA supervises the organisation of the LDS workshops and conferences aiming to both disseminate LDS’ mission and engage language data stakeholders to be a part of the LDS infrastructure.

What does the European Language Data Space look like in your vision?

Since the mid-90s, the European Union, the European Commission and various other entities have been laying the groundwork for infrastructures aiming at ensuring that language resources are accessible under fair conditions, encompassing financial and legal aspects. From my perspective, the LDS represents the pinnacle of such infrastructural efforts, as it aims to facilitate efficient data exchange between data-holding industries and data-consuming sectors. The LDS is envisioned as a resource-providing infrastructure for technology developers and embraces the principles of fairness, sovereignty, trust, efficiency and effectiveness.

Where do you see the relevance of the European Language Data Space?

I believe that the LDS will play a crucial role in providing European AI stakeholders with access to language data sets for EU-based Large Language Models. These will be provided under clear legal conditions and preventing unethical practices. My vision is for the LDS to evolve into a sustainable infrastructure that can be transitioned to key European players post-procurement, either through a consortium or potentially via the emerging ALT-EDIC entity.