The world is riding a shockwave set in motion by the transition to a data-driven economy and into the new age of machine knowledge capital, driven by big data and generative artificial intelligence.
Speaking during a keynote session at the Canadian Investment Review’s 2025 Alternative Investment Conference, Dan Ciuriak, senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance and Innovation and the director and principal of Ciuriak Consulting Inc., took a forward-looking scan on the implications of these momentous changes.
“The economy is evolving very rapidly because of the introduction of a new form of capital.”
He started with an historical overview of the ages of capital, from the early 1800s, when land was the main source of wealth, to the industrial revolution, to a series of technological breakthroughs that led to the knowledge-based economy and then the data-driven economy, which ushered in big data, deep learning and the scaling up of AI systems.
In terms of the economic impact, Ciuriak referred to the period after 2013 as ‘slowbalization,’ noting the rise of international trade flattened, primarily because the increase in global value chains stopped and U.S. manufacturing output slowed.
“The narrative in the U.S. is that all of these jobs were the great sucking sound of [the North American Free Trade Agreement] and the great sucking sound of China joining the [World Trade Organization]. But really, it was the great sucking sound of wages in manufacturing being captured by U.S. capital.”
The introduction of a new form of capital, including the automation of intellectual property and the rise in skills-biased technological change, had a profound change on the economic structure, he said.
During the knowledge-based era, most advanced countries, such as Canada, weren’t doing badly, noted Ciuriak, but with the data-driven economy, the U.S. soared from a 24.8 per cent share of global GDP at market prices to 32.2 per cent, while other advanced countries — including Canada — tanked. “For Canada, the loss of that market share in GDP terms was worth US$294 billion in 2025. That’s 13 per cent of our GDP.”
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On the other hand, the U.S. made out like bandits, he said, by sucking up all of the data from around the world through its technology platform companies. Meanwhile, China managed to develop its own platforms and its own data-driven economy behind the “Great Firewall,” he added, but the rest of the world saw a massive outflow of data.
However, Ciuriak also highlighted that data isn’t reflected anywhere in GDP accounts; its contribution is measured by the amount spent to capture, curate, cleanse and process it. “But it’s in your portfolios,” he told the audience. “And when you monetize that and then use it for consumption, you increase GDP, so the U.S. consumption share of measured GDP is rising. What they’re really doing is monetizing the data they’ve been capturing from the rest of the world. For the U.S., it’s big, big money.”
When there’s a new form of capital, it reshapes everything, he added. “Society reshapes because the wealth is shifted around. Politics change because it coalesces around new political alignments . . . and geopolitics align because, once you introduce a new form of capital, fundamentally that’s revisionist in international relations terms.”
Moving to current day, he said the U.S.’ role in the world is changing completely as it channels populous trade economics while blaming the country’s domestic problems on foreign causes. The U.S. dollar isn’t driven by its international role but by technology, he added, which creates shortcuts for the investment industry. On one hand, U.S. technology supports the economy, but if there’s a big fall on the technology front, the dollar will come under pressure.
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“Tariffs and the cultural revolution that’s going on in the U.S. is now creating a crisis,” said Ciuriak, adding there’s a major incoherence in the tariff policy. “If they came to fruition, the capital inflows that [President Donald] Trump is touting would drive a U.S. capital account surplus. This is basic accounting: a capital account surplus has to be mirrored in a current account deficit, but meanwhile, the tariffs are supposed to eliminate the trade deficit. You’ve got these two things that can’t work together so they’re bound to be disappointed.”
In terms of technological perspectives, a lot of money is flowing into the startup phase of generative AI at very high valuations, he said, noting there’s an inherent risk factor that’s now coupled with the real economy, which is being weighed down by tariffs and uncertainty.
While the industrial revolution introduced scalability intro manufacturing, generative AI is introducing scalability into services, which Ciuriak called “absolutely huge” because services are 70 per cent of Canada’s GDP.
“Formally, human capital does not scale. AI does scale. And with robots, you train one robot, you train a million; you train one person, you have to train the next person. This world scales both in terms of manufacturing and in services. And so tomorrow is not going to be like today.”
Read more coverage of the 2025 Alternative Investment Conference.