Where does your AI data actually live?

There are two boundaries around any AI system in a regulated industry, and they have different owners. One is the jurisdiction: what data can leave the country, and under whose rules. The other is the building: what can leave your own estate at all, and who signs for it when it does. Most AI programs do not stall on the model. They stall here, on where the data lives, who can reach it, and what an auditor will accept as evidence twelve months from now. The proprietary data that makes an AI system worth building is the same data that makes it a risk to build. And the boundary drawn around a pilot has a habit of quietly becoming the boundary around production, whether or not anyone chose it. A product sheet does not answer those questions. They get answered case by case, with a particular regulator and a particular legal team in the room, which is why The Register is putting them to HPE and NVIDIA over dinner in Washington on Thursday 29 October. Editor-in-chief Matt Rosoff takes the chair and nothing is on the record. HPE sends Thierry Pienaar, HPE Fellow and Chief Technology Officer for HPC and AI Worldwide Sales. NVIDIA sends Bert Condensa, Vice President for Enterprise AI Factory Segment Sales. Both are there to take questions. Nobody is bringing slides, and the chair cuts off anyone who starts pitching. The evening runs under the Chatham House Rule, so what is said can be used and who said it cannot. That is what makes the useful answers possible, like what a hospital group's legal team refused to sign, and what it signed instead. On the table: which infrastructure options actually hold a boundary, what each one costs in capital, in capability or in elasticity, and whether any of it survives the move from planning into running operations. The table is for technology, data and risk leaders in healthcare, financial services, research, pharmaceuticals, government and higher education who are making these calls now rather than next year. Dinner runs from 6.00pm to 8.30pm at Fiola Mare. Places are limited and go by invitation. Request one here. Government and public sector guests: where your agency's ethics rules require it, you can pay your own share and we will provide a receipt. Please say so when you request an invitation.