For years, the phrase "data is the new oil" has dominated discourse about the digital economy. The comparison seemed apt: both resources power transformative technologies, create enormous economic value, and concentrate wealth among those controlling extraction and refinement. This metaphor shaped regulatory frameworks, business strategies, and geopolitical competition, influencing how governments, corporations, and citizens understand data's role in society.

But this comparison fundamentally mischaracterizes the nature of data and threatens to entrench digital power concentration among a handful of global tech superpowers. Oil is finite, extractive, and inherently competitive, whoever controls oil fields controls the resource. Data is something else entirely.

In 2025, in the lead-up to the AI Action Summit, AI Safety Asia (AISA) and Asia Society France convened a landmark dialogue titled "From Oil to Water: Governing AI as a Global Public Good—A Europe-Asia Dialogue." The event proposed a paradigm shift that could transform how humanity approaches digital governance: understanding data not as oil, but as water.

The Geopolitics of Governance Paradigms

The water-based paradigm becomes especially relevant when examining the geopolitics of AI governance. Current debates often default to a US-China binary that obscures rich diversity in how different societies conceptualize the relationship between individual rights, collective welfare, and technological governance.

Western frameworks, particularly those emerging from the United States and European Union, typically emphasize individual data rights, privacy as personal autonomy, individual consent as the cornerstone of legitimate data use, and competition law as the primary mechanism for preventing concentration. These approaches reflect deeply embedded cultural assumptions about the primacy of individual liberty.

Asian governance traditions, while diverse internally, often balance individual rights with collective welfare considerations more explicitly. From Singapore's approach to data sharing for public health to Japan's Society 5.0 framework emphasizing human-centered technology for social good, these models demonstrate that protecting individuals and advancing collective flourishing need not be zero-sum propositions.

These cultural differences aren't obstacles to global governance—they're resources. The governance of data and AI demands dialogue that transcends binaries and incorporates diverse cultural perspectives on rights, responsibilities, and the public good.

The convening assembled architects of change from across the Europe-Asia corridor to explore this paradigm shift in practice. The distinguished participants brought not just geographic diversity but genuine diversity in governance philosophy and institutional experience.

Shri S. Krishnan, Secretary of India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), served as Guest of Honor, representing one of the world's most populous democracies as it navigates AI governance balancing innovation imperatives with inclusive development and democratic values.

The panel brought together perspectives from across the AI governance ecosystem:

Dr. Yuko Harayama, Secretary General of GPAI Tokyo Expert Support Center, represented multilateral approaches to AI governance and Japan's emphasis on human-centered AI principles embedded in Society 5.0 frameworks.

Nicolas Miailhe, Co-founder of The Future Society and President of PRISM Eval—an OECD initiative on AI evaluation—brought European civil society perspectives and practical experience developing evaluation frameworks that could operationalize governance principles.

Prof. Yi Zeng, Professor at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, contributed insights from China's AI research community and distinctive approaches to AI ethics rooted in different philosophical traditions.

Abhishek Singh, Additional Secretary at India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, added ground-level implementation perspective from a government actively building digital public infrastructure at unprecedented scale.

The guests reflected the conviction that governing data and AI as global public goods requires genuinely multistakeholder dialogue.

Beyond Binaries Toward Shared Stewardship

The dialogue explored concrete implications of shifting data governance paradigms. How might international frameworks change if we treated data infrastructure as we treat transboundary resources—requiring cooperation, shared standards, and mechanisms for equitable access? What would "data pollution" regulations look like, analogous to water quality standards that protect public health? How do we ensure computational resources flow to where they're needed for development and innovation, not just where market forces concentrate them?

The Europe-Asia dialogue modeled what global AI governance conversations must become: moving beyond the limitations of US-China framing, incorporating diverse cultural perspectives on rights and responsibilities, centering voices from across the Global North and Global South, and grounding high-level principles in practical governance mechanisms.

As AI systems become increasingly central to human flourishing, the frameworks we build for governing data—AI's essential substrate—will determine whether these technologies serve concentrated interests or genuine public good. The metaphors we use shape the governance paradigms we imagine as possible.

This dialogue demonstrated that building this new paradigm requires conversations that transcend geographic and ideological boundaries, bringing diverse perspectives to shared challenges. As participants from India, Japan, China, France, and multilateral institutions engaged these questions together, they modeled the kind of global cooperation that governing AI as a true public good demands.