By Futurist Thomas Frey
The War That Changed Its Objective Mid-Battle
In 2023, I wrote about the coming data wars—a looming conflict where nations and corporations would battle for novel data sources to train increasingly powerful AI systems. I envisioned spy agencies competing for quantum fluctuation data, microbiome sequences, dream interpretation streams, and atmospheric electromagnetic readings. The victor in this data arms race would hold decisive strategic advantage through AI supremacy.
Two years later, the data wars are absolutely happening. But they’ve evolved into something far more profound than a competition for exotic datasets. Those novel data sources I predicted may still arrive—quantum sensors, neural dust, smart fabric readings—but they’ve been eclipsed by a more fundamental question that nobody saw coming.
The data wars aren’t really about data anymore. They’re about whose culture, whose morality, whose language, and whose values become embedded in the AI systems that will mediate human experience for generations to come. This isn’t a competition with a finish line—it’s a forever battle for the soul of machine intelligence.
Continue reading… “Data Wars Update: Why the Battle for Training Data Became a Battle for Civilization”
