> What makes this vast private data uniquely valuable is its quality and real-world grounding.

This is a bold assumption. After Enron (financial transactions), Lehman Brothers (customer/population databases, financial transactions), Theranos (electronic health records), Nikola (proprietary research data), Juicero (I don't even know what this is), WeWork (umm ... everything), FTX (everything and we know they didn't mind lying to themselves) I'm pretty sure we can all say for certain that "real world grounding" isn't a guarantee with regards to anything where money or ego is involved.

Not to mention that at this point we're actively dealing with processes being run (improperly) by AI (see the lawsuits against Cigna and and United Health Care [1]), leading to self-training loops without revealing the "self" aspect of it.

[1]: https://www.afslaw.com/perspectives/health-care-counsel-blog...

(OP Here) This is a fair point. Internal datasets can be deceitful just as public ones can. That said, most propaganda lives in the public domain. :)