Asia Pacific Proposes Governing AI Data as Public Infrastructure
- •Asia-Pacific nations urged to govern cultural training data as public infrastructure rather than extractable private property.
- •Proposed Data Trusts would allow creators to collectively negotiate licensing terms with global AI developers.
- •Implementation of a transparency stack using provenance tracking is essential for maintaining national cognitive sovereignty.
The rapid evolution of generative models has sparked a debate over the extraction of cultural knowledge from non-Western societies. Mika Noh (cultural policy strategist) argues that countries in the Asia-Pacific must transition from standard copyright laws to a model of collective stewardship. This approach treats cultural data as vital public infrastructure rather than private property to be harvested by foreign corporations without permission or compensation.
The core of this strategy involves the creation of Data Trusts, which are legal frameworks where creators pool their data rights. Instead of an individual artist fighting a trillion-dollar platform, a trust acts as a collective representative to negotiate licensing terms and revenue-sharing mechanisms. This ensures that the cognitive sovereignty of a nation—its institutional knowledge in sectors like law, art, and healthcare—is not outsourced to unaccountable private algorithms.
To succeed, governments must invest in a transparency stack of technical tools. This includes systems for tracking data lineage (provenance) through metadata and blockchain-based authentication to ensure content authenticity. By enforcing ethical data sourcing, jurisdictions can create safe harbors that attract high-value investment while protecting the dignity and intellectual traditions of local creators.