Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1989. But he has been dissatisfied with the best way his original vision for the online has panned out.
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Personal artificial intelligence assistants that know our health status and legal history inside out. The flexibility to transfer your data from one place to a different seamlessly with none roadblocks.
These are only among the predictions for the long run of the online from the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, on the thirty fifth anniversary of its invention.
Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the world-changing technology in 1989 while working at CERN, the Swiss particle physics research center.
The London-born computer scientist submitted a proposal for an information management system to assist his colleagues share information amongst themselves.
When it began, I could not have predicted that it was going to be like this, this alteration.
Tim Berners-Lee
Inventor, World Wide Web
Berners-Lee got to proceed working on his idea for this information sharing system, and by 1991, the World Wide Web was up and running.
When Tim Berners-Lee began work on the World Wide Web 35 years ago, he had no idea it was about to grow to be the ever present force it’s today. “I could not have predicted that it was going to be like this, this alteration,” he told CNBC.
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In 1993, Berners-Lee convinced CERN to release the Web protocol and source code into the general public domain with none patents or fees. Berners-Lee has attributed the runaway success of the online to this decision.
Berners-Lee remembers what things were like when the online got began 35 years ago. “When it began, I could not have predicted that it was going to be like this, this alteration,” he told CNBC.
He could tell there have been signs the online was going to grow in a giant way early on, though. Traffic to the very first website, info.cern.ch, “was going up by an element of 10 every 12 months, so doubling every 4 months.”
“We lost track of the logs because they cut off,” Berners-Lee recalls. “Now that is going to be a serious thing. We’d like to be certain it doesn’t collapse.”
Within the a long time which have passed because the web’s creation, Berners-Lee sees among the downsides which have come about. For one, social media feeds tailored by AI algorithms have meant people “feeling offended and upset, or hateful,” he says.
Meanwhile, the convenience of manufacturing content on social media platforms and spinning up latest web sites and blogs has led to a “disempowerment” for people and businesses — and a lack of ownership over our data, he adds.
But Berners-Lee still has some optimism for the long run. Listed here are a few of his top predictions for what the online will appear like in the subsequent 35 years.
Prediction 1: Everyone could have a private AI assistant
One in every of Berners-Lee’s big predictions is that AI will transform the best way we interact with the online.
With the arrival of generative AI tools like Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT, tech firms are betting consumers will grow to be way more engaged with digital chatbots to get information they need and help them produce written materials and even code.
There are already firms attempting to reimagine what our interaction with the online will appear like using AI-powered devices, including Samsung with its Galaxy S24 smartphone, and U.S. startup Humane AI with its wearable Pin device.
You’ll have an AI assistant that works for you, like a physician.
Tim Berners-Lee
Inventor, World Wide Web
Berners-Lee thinks that someday we’ll have AI assistants that work for us — much like our doctors, lawyers, and bankers.
“Some people worry about whether, in 35 years, AI will likely be more powerful than us,” Berners-Lee told CNBC via a Zoom video call last week.
“One in every of the things I predict — however it’s something we can have to fight for — is you should have an AI assistant, which you possibly can trust, and it really works for you, like a physician,” Berners-Lee said.
Robert Blumofe, global chief technology officer of Akamai, said he thinks the online will stop being something that humans use — and that AI agents will take the reins on our behalf.
“You possibly can imagine a world years from now where the online is a realm of AI agents and humans now not effectively use the online,” Blumofe told CNBC in an interview last week.
“It could all be done through AI agents; you’d never go on to your checking account online, or your health provider online, or any e-commerce sites.”
Akamai was founded in response to a challenge Berners-Lee posed on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in early 1995 to create a latest way of delivering web content to finish users faster.
Blumofe still thinks we’ll go surfing for entertainment TV shows, movies, and video games. But he thinks loads of the day by day functions of our online lives will in future be managed by AI.
“Human beings can return to our lives within the physical world greeting one another head to head as a physical experience, quite than a virtual experience,” he said.
Prediction 2: We’ll take true ownership of our data across all platforms — including VR
One other thing Berners-Lee is forecasting is an online during which we’ll all have full control of our data.
So, quite than handing away ownership of our data to Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and other tech giants, we’ll as a substitute give you the option to own our data through a knowledge store, or “pod.”
“You will consider your data pod as your digital space, you will consider it as being one thing you are very comfortable with,” Berners-Lee explains.
Pods are a technology Berners-Lee is working on together with his startup Inrupt.
Tim Berners-Lee is forecasting is an online during which we’ll all have full control of our data. So, quite than handing away ownership of our data to Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and other tech giants, we’ll as a substitute give you the option to own our data through a knowledge store, or “pod.”
Sebastian Derungs | Afp via Getty Images
Inrupt is behind something called the Solid protocol, which “goals to seriously change the best way Web applications work today, leading to true data ownership in addition to improved privacy.”
In 2022, the firm raised $30 million from enterprise capital firms including Forte Ventures, Akamai, and Glasswing Ventures.
You possibly can go do things with a VR headset, after which if you take the VR headset off, you possibly can do it with an enormous screen. And at any time when you progress, you possibly can grab your phone and the experience will likely be as one. It should very easily go between different devices.
Tim Berners-Lee
Inventor, World Wide Web
In Berners-Lee’s vision for a future web, you will give you the option to make use of your digital pod to access all of your essential applications for example, email across your phone, but additionally your laptop, desktop computer, and larger screens like TVs.
Berners-Lee added that his idea is for us to have a set of “trust apps” that we are able to allow to speak with one another to share information and do essential tasks much faster.
Take, for instance, buying flights. Berners-Lee predicts that the long run experience for the online will likely be one where you need to use your wallet to buy flights off a flight aggregator, after which give it access to data you entrust it with to give you plans for what to do at your destination.
“Your entire to do lists, calendar events and so forth, and all the various parts of your data, will come together, so the power to live your life becomes way more powerful.”
Chintan Patel, chief technology officer for software firm Cisco within the U.K., said he thinks the online is ultimately moving to put that is open and where information will be shared more easily.
“Regardless that we now have seen increasingly the online becoming slightly fragmented with more siloed platforms — more information is collected, sold, even misused in lots of cases,” Patel said.
Nevertheless, he noted that OpenAI’s ChatGPT — and several other other popular generative AI tools — are powered by data sourced from the open web.
“For all its faults, the online has brought far more advantages to society and made many more things possible,” Patel said.
Berners-Lee predicts his vision for the online may also go a step further with virtual and mixed reality, where the physical and digital world each interact through powerful headsets, in line with Berners-Lee.
“You possibly can go do things with a VR headset, after which if you take the VR headset off, you possibly can do it with an enormous screen,” he said. “And at any time when you progress, you possibly can grab your phone and the experience will likely be as one. It should very easily go between different devices.”
Mixed reality is a latest dimension for accessing the online experts expect we’ll get more used to over time.
“There’s going to be some great shifts happening by way of some serious digital connectivity,” Patel told CNBC in an interview.
“It would be called by then some type of spatial computing and spatial environment which won’t be something we’re on the lookout for, but an immersive experience delivered to us.”
Prediction 3: A Big Tech company could get broken up
One other thing Berners-Lee says might occur in the long run is a giant tech company being forced to interrupt up.
Last week, the European Union’s landmark Digital Markets Act (DMA), which forces tech giants to vary their platforms to permit for competitor products to flourish, officially got here into force, in a serious step that advocates hope will result in a healthier tech competition landscape.
If a tech firm breaches its obligations under the DMA, the European Commission can implement some meaty legal measures. That features fines value as much as 10% of an organization’s global annual revenues, or 20% for repeat offenders.
Things are changing so quickly. AI is changing very, in a short time. There are monopolies in AI. Monopolies modified pretty quickly back in the online.
Tim Berners-Lee
Inventor, World Wide Web
In some extreme cases, the Commission can demand the breakup of firms — although most antitrust lawyers think such an consequence is unlikely, given the legal hurdles Brussels may face.
Berners-Lee said he all the time prefers it when tech firms “do the best thing by themselves” before regulators step in. “That is all the time been the spirit of the web.”
He uses the instance of the Data Transfer Initiative, a non-public initiative that launched in 2018 and is now backed by the likes of Google, Apple, and Meta, to encourage portability of photos, videos and other data between their platforms.
“Possibly the businesses were prompted a bit by the potential for regulation,” Berners-Lee said. “But this was an independent thing.”
Nevertheless, he added: “Things are changing so quickly. AI is changing very, in a short time. There are monopolies in AI. Monopolies modified pretty quickly back in the online.”
“Possibly sooner or later in the long run, agencies could have to work to interrupt up big firms, but we do not know which company that will likely be,” Berners-Lee said.