The Download: selling battlefield drone data and AI reshaping language

Ukraine is releasing millions of data points from tens of thousands of drone flights to military contractors and commercial firms, turning battlefield remnants into a training ground for AI models and prompting calls for a regulatory regime distinct from ordinary commercial data. Meanwhile, AI ethicist Jenny Williams’ short story “Mother Tongue” depicts a child’s AI companion teaching a foreign language as an enigmatic system called Tingsu emerges in a nuclear-armed nation.