GoKawiilBattlefields in Ukraine are littered with the remnants of drones. But behind all that wreckage, there’s a new gold mine for the defense sector: the data those drones generate.
Ukraine has begun making millions of data points gathered during tens of thousands of drone flights available to military contractors and commercial companies. It’s a quick way to attract funding and partnerships, but it turns the front line into a model training site, using the chaos of war to create conditions that AI companies struggle to reproduce.
As this new industry takes shape, we need a regulatory system that ensures battlefield data isn’t treated like ordinary commercial material.
Read the full op-ed on why battlefield data needs new rules.
Mother tongue
—“Mother Tongue” is a short fiction story by author and AI ethicist Jenny Williams
“Daddy?” Theo curled against my side in bed. “Where do words go when they die?
“Well, kiddo,” I said, scratching my beard. “Words aren’t really alive to begin with. Not like you and I are alive.”
Inside, Theo’s AI companion teaches him strange songs in a language his father doesn’t understand. But outside, the world is edging toward disaster. A mysterious agentic system called Tingsu has emerged in a nuclear-armed country, and no one seems to understand what it wants.
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