Good morning, CIOs. There's been a growing movement among consumer advocacy groups for the idea of data ownership, where people retain the right to sell their data or restrict its use as they see fit. Could such a system work? And what would be the impact on companies that rely upon data to deliver better services and innovate? The Wall Street Journal invited two advocates to square off over the issue. Read the excerpts below and review the full debate here.

Yes. "When firms own data, they may not want to sell it to their competitors. For a company like Amazon, Facebook or Google, their users’ data gives them an important competitive advantage. But if consumers owned their data, they could sell it to multiple firms, stimulating competition and innovation." —Christopher Tonetti, associate professor of economics at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

No. "American consumers deserve better protection for their privacy. But a marketplace that would only encourage even less privacy and disrupt businesses and the flow of information crucial to the smooth functioning of the economy and society isn’t the solution. Companies should be the stewards of personal data, not become the owners." —Andrew H. Tisch, Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

How we learned to prosper using fewer resources. Information technology, the internet, mobile devices and advanced technologies are enabling companies to do more with less, says CIO Journal Columnist Irving Wladawsky-Berger.

AI learns to create fake news stories. Researchers who have developed synthetic-text technology, and people who have studied it, fear that as such tools get more advanced, they could spread misinformation or advance a political agenda. 

A potential weapon. The U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, in late August unveiled a program called Semantic Forensics, which aims to tackle the growing threat of automated disinformation attacks, including text-based ones. (WSJ)

Can an AI system be given a patent? An artificially intelligent system called Dabus purportedly has created two new products: A specially shaped container lid designed for robotic gripping and a flashlight system for attracting human attention in emergencies. Now patent offices must decide if the AI can be named as the inventor. (WSJ)

The ultimate learning machine. The future of artificial intelligence depends on designing computers that can think and explore as resourcefully as babies do, says Alison Gopnik in a WSJ essay. Spoiler alert: AI will never be as cute.

What Steve Jobs taught Marc Benioff. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff visited Cupertino, Calif. in 2003 seeking answers to how to move his company into the next phase of growth. Steve Jobs had a suggestion: Built an application system. It would be years before Mr. Benioff would understand what Mr. Jobs meant and when he did it profoundly changed his idea of innovation. 

Building an ecosystem is about acknowledging that the next game-changing innovation may come from a brilliant technologist and mentor based in Silicon Valley, or it may come from a novice programmer based halfway around the world. (WSJ)

African nations use high-tech to move new vaccines. The Ghanaian government is in talks with South San Francisco-based automated-logistics company Zipline Inc. to start delivering the malaria vaccine to remote locations via drones, a service it already provides for other products, including intravenous antibiotics, blood platelets and snake antivenom. The vaccine, developed by GlaxoSmithKline, requires four doses over roughly 18 months, which makes the vaccine the most complex ever to be launched in the developing world. (WSJ)

Silicon Valley takes on Amazon’s Cashierless ‘Go’ stores. As Amazon opens its fourth Amazon Go's cashierless convenience store, startups, like San Francisco-based Zippin and Standard Cognition, are pitching similar technology, with camera systems powered by computer vision and machine-learning software that track people as they take items off shelves to grocery chains, sports stadiums and convenience stores.

Costs are coming down. Two to three years ago, outfitting a 7-Eleven-size store with cameras and a high-performance computer server could cost millions of dollars, said Gary Brown, who leads artificial-intelligence product marketing at Intel. Now, suppliers say, outfitting the same size store could cost anywhere from $100,000 to $300,000.

SoftBank seeking to take control of WeWork. SoftBank has prepared a financing package that would give it control of WeWork and further sideline its founder Adam Neumann in exchange for relieving the shared-office startup’s looming cash crunch. (WSJ)

Congress probes bot-generated messages about e-cigarettes. A congressional committee and the Massachusetts attorney general are investigating whether millions of bot-generated social-media messages about e-cigarettes have been misleading consumers about safety and health issues. The committee’s requests are part of a broader probe into marketing of e-cigarettes, which have exploded in popularity. (WSJ)

EU warns of 5G security risks. The European Union last week released a public report warning that hostile states or state-backed actors posed a security threat to new 5G mobile networks being rolled out around the world.

Also ... A risk analysis circulating among EU members is warning of specific security threats posed by telecom-equipment suppliers, particularly from countries with “no democratic and legal restrictions in place.”

Fun fact unmentioned in the report. China's Huawei has been a big supplier of network gear in large European economies like the U.K. and Germany. (WSJ)

Technology! In 2017, Americans spent $178 billion on residential electricity, about 10% less per household, after accounting for inflation, than residential customers spent in 2010. How? Thank more energy-efficient appliances and electronics and—most important—light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, which have replaced traditional incandescent lightbulbs. (WSJ)

Hundreds of foreign women and children linked to Islamic State escaped from a camp in northeastern Syria when Turkish-backed fighters attacked it, U.S.-backed Kurdish forces controlling the area said. (WSJ)

The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded Monday to a trio of U.S.-based economists—including a married couple—for their “experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.” (WSJ)

Small steps toward a trade truce between China and the U.S. likely aren’t enough to diminish uncertainties that are holding back world economic growth, as new fronts in the trade war open. (WSJ)

One of Japan’s worst typhoons in decades brought record-breaking rainfall to broad swaths of the country, killing more than two dozen people and causing breaches in river levees that submerged low-lying areas. (WSJ)

Write to Steve Rosenbush at steven.rosenbush@wsj.com.

Follow the WSJ CIO Journal Team on Twitter: @steve_rosenbush, @scastellWSJ, @angusloten, @agamsh, @tomloftus.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.