Who Really Owns Your Company's Data?

With the proliferation of AI, it has become more apparent that whoever controls the data has the advantage. Much as whoever holds the high ground wins the battle.

At Shift, we have experienced this firsthand as we began our journey designing on-premise, air-gapped and secure generative AI systems for quant hedge funds. Data sovereignty is paramount, and the best way to ensure that was to never let it leave the company's "four walls." However, most of us use third party solutions like Slack or Office 365 every day. These servers are not physically with us, but we rent them as a service and they are paramount to our business. Considering we pay for these services, it should be obvious that the data we create and that is stored is well within our domain and we own it.

This is why The Information's June 10th article titled "Salesforce Blocks AI Rivals From Using Slack Data" left us scratching our heads. In particular, their comments that they were restricting third parties, who have permission from the customers whose data it is, from accessing the company's data in order to "protect customer privacy." We have also seen similar tactics with other platforms. For example, we know of a platform that charges customers for APIs to access data that they put into the system in the first place!

How we feel about this.

Simply put, if you are paying for a service, the data you put into that service is yours to do with what you wish. If the service needs to raise the price to cover costs to support this, then so be it. But to restrict it under the pretense that they are protecting us when in reality it is to protect their dominance in the market and to keep us as captives in order to buy future products from them, we believe, is not right.

What you should do.

Be sure to use services that are accessible (most times through an API) and allow you to use the third-party tools as you wish.

Why?

The AI landscape is changing so fast that you need the freedom to use the best tools in the market at that time and it is unlikely that a single provider will have it all. Your internal data is one of the most valuable assets you possess so don’t give it away.

~Michael, Founder & CEO

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About Shift

Shift builds AI-powered research tools that help investment teams surface insights and drive better decisions. We're a team of builders and finance experts based in Charlottesville, VA. Learn more at shifthq.ai.