Frontier labs are paying obscene sums for old Slack threads as real-world data becomes the moat
sarahookr · x · 2026-10-15
In a thread, Sarah Hooker argues frontier labs are paying obscene amounts for old Slack threads, bankrupt airline logs, and deprecated archives because the smartest model is no longer built in isolation — it depends on real-world interaction signal.
- Labs pay data companies wild sums to synthesize and mimic real-world surfaces, but synthetic data is a substitute, not a replacement.
- Power is shifting from pure AI labs to institutions holding product surfaces: law firms, medical providers, tax platforms sitting on the exact interaction data labs need.
- Frontier modeling teams rarely think about interface; without a direct surface to the world they're structurally disadvantaged, giving institutional companies a narrow window to leverage their own data.
Related event: Frontier Labs Pay Top Dollar for Real-World Interaction Data(2 posts)→
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