Michael Peres sits down with Art Abal, co-founder of Vana and a leading thinker at the intersection of data systems, AI, and governance. With experience ranging from advising the Prime Minister of Timor-Leste to running global data sourcing at Appen for products like Google Search, Facebook Feed, and ChatGPT, Art has spent his career figuring out how human data is collected, valued, and used – and what a fairer AI economy could look like. Now at Vana, he’s working on user-owned data networks that put people, not platforms, in control.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
• What Vana is building and how user-owned data networks could reshape how AI is trained
• How Art’s path from law and public policy to Appen and Vana shaped his views on human data and power
• The biggest problems with traditional AI training models and centralized data scraping
• How user-focused, consent-based data can reduce compute needs, improve accuracy, and align with emerging privacy laws
• How decentralized, user-owned data networks could let people control and monetize their data in a fairer AI economy
