For years, commentators compared data to one of the world’s most important commodities: oil. Much like how massive oil reserves conferred wealth and power on the world’s petrostates and fossil-fuel firms in the 20th century, countries and companies with lots of data could leverage that resource in the 21st century.
The argument is taking on greater relevance with the rise of AI: Large countries like the U.S. and China can train their AI models on massive amounts of data, while smaller economies, with less data on hand, just can’t keep up.
