Internationally Fragmented Data Could Lead to Geopolitically Antagonistic AI

Divergent regulatory regimes for data, driven by different motivations, ranging from privacy protection in the European Union to information control in China, could eventually produce distinctively different, and possibly contradictory, bodies of data. Artificial-intelligence models trained on those datasets could produce differing and possibly even conflicting outputs. To the extent that AI outputs start to shape human perception and to influence decisions, in governments and businesses, and among the public, antagonistic AI models would reinforce the mutual mistrust and hostility inherent in the current geopolitical environment, potentially making it harder to resolve conflicts. As a consequence, the fragmentation of data is becoming an important issue in the evolution of AI and its potential impact on human society.