Forbes - AI: The Battlefield In The War For Data Control

CJL director Dr. Courtney C. Radsch warns in a quote that unchecked data control can lead to monopolization and ethical issues in AI development.

“Unless we dismantle these data monopolies and encourage practices that protect privacy and competition, innovation will be little more than a hallucination that benefits dominant incumbents at the expense of citizen and consumer welfare, choice, and rights.”

Meta’s chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, speaking at Davos, predicted that today’s generative AI models—large language models (LLMs)—will soon be obsolete. He argues that we are on the verge of a new AI paradigm that will move beyond simple pattern recognition into actual reasoning, planning, and real-world understanding. He also sees the coming decade as the “decade of robotics,” where AI systems will not just process information but interact with the physical world in unprecedented ways.

LeCun is correct that AI is evolving fast, and we’re about to witness a transformation that makes today’s capabilities look primitive. However, he underplays a critical factor: the most significant barrier to this future isn’t just computing power—it’s data control. The real battle in AI won’t be over GPUs alone; it will be over who controls the training data that fuels intelligence in the first place.

This is a growing concern among policymakers and industry leaders alike. Benoît Cœuré, president of France’s Autorité de la Concurrence (Competition Authority), recently warned that AI dominance relies on the control of data and computing power, concentrated in a handful of U.S. tech giants.

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