Toxic waste, not just oil

Data, as well all know, matter. They have no value unless secured, stored and analysed. This was the contention of our first ever theme piece. Others have likened data to oil; a resource that is valuable and scarce but needs to be refined and processed in order to be truly useful. Countries may also go to war over it. As well understood as all the above may be, your author heard data described as “the new toxic waste” for the first time last week. An emotive expression for sure, but an important one too that deserves further consideration. Data can be both valuable and toxic simultaneously.

After having recently quizzed Heptagon’s own Chief Technology Officer on all things tech, your author had a serendipitous catch-up recently with another tech expert, Matt Frank, the Chief AI and Innovation Officer at Telana. The business (formerly known as Ancoris) acts as a technology partner delivering AI, data, cloud and other related solutions to businesses.

No surprise that data may now be at risk of being toxified if we are, as Matt described it, “in an arms race” regarding the development of large language models (or LLMs) currently. These models are not cheap either to develop or to run – the DeepSeek training cost statistics need, arguably, to be treated with some caution – but “the game is on” in terms of who can develop and scale the most efficient models most quickly.

A major caveat to this thesis, however, is the notion of LLM poisoning. The term is as new (at least to this author) and as noxious as it sounds, linking neatly with the idea of toxic waste. Imagine a scenario where false online content, were it used to influence the training of large language models, would allow them then to generate responses that echo inaccurate information, often apparently propagated by adversarial nation states. Voila, the LLM is poisoned. This consideration triggers bigger debates over data sovereignty, content ownership, licensing and usage rights. It’s also a useful reminder that, as we have written previously, AI’s development is nascent and will be non-linear. Interest in the technology will, of course, remain elevated until “the next wave of tech comes along.” When asked what this might be, Matt ventured quantum, a theme we have endorsed for some time.

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Originally Posted on April 16, 2025 – Toxic waste, not just oil

The above does not constitute investment advice and is the sole opinion of the author at the time of publication. Past performance is no guide to future performance and the value of investments and income from them can fall as well as rise.

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