AI Companies Are Eyeing Your Data Like Gold—Here’s How Anna Kazlauskas Fights Back

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You park your car in a lot and the attendant doesn’t call it his. It’s the same with your data. Legally, it’s yours, though fat lot of good that does you if you don’t realize it. Meanwhile, the tech barons are counting their coins, selling off your data like day-old bread. Maybe we should get some of that bread back.

What’s in it for developers, besides blood pressure spikes?
If you’ve ever tried wrangling data out of the big tech corrals, you know it’s easier to lasso a tornado. All the good stuff is locked up behind their fences, so a lot of the bright, restless developer folk go work inside the very labs they wanted to outsmart. But if the fences came down—well, maybe things would get interesting.

This Data DAO business. Is it a barn dance or just a mob?
It’s a labor union for your stray data. The magic only happens when you pool it, and suddenly there’s enough to make those clever AIs sit up and beg. Alone, your data’s a whisper; together, you’re practically a brass band.

Seen any DAOs lately that don’t make you groan?
Some health DAOs catch my eye—imagine folks handing over their medical history so researchers can actually do something useful. DLP Labs is chasing after car data, and as for Tesla—well, they have a reputation, but maybe the drivers have the upper hand for once. Nothing says disruption like folks outsmarting the machines they drive.

What’s the big idea with Flower Labs and your grandly named COLLECTIVE-1?
Well, COLLECTIVE-1 is a model that doesn’t belong to a single company, but to the poor souls who gave it everything it knows. Usually, these models are trained in secret by some tech wizard in their fortress of solitude. Flower AI came in swinging from the open-source fences, Vana showed up with the data wagon, and suddenly you’ve got a model owned by…everyone! A model where, for once, you get to tell it what not to do—maybe even teach it to make a decent cup of coffee.

So decentralized AI might actually, well, work?
Surprisingly, yes. It’s not just about sticking it to The Man, it’s about building something that’s actually better—because when you’re getting data from everyone, not just the sneaky few, your AI can learn things it never could behind closed doors. The secret ingredient isn’t ideology, it’s data. Apple’s got its orchard, Google has its garden, but the wild prairies of user data? Now that’s a feast fit for any hungry algorithm.

Well, Anna, that’s a future even the Joad family might crack a smile about. See you onstage in Toronto. 🚀

Jeff Wilser runs the show at Consensus 2025’s AI Summit, and also chases the wild beast of Decentralized AI on his podcast, if you’re in the mood for stories.

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2025-05-09 00:58