Tim Berners-Lee provides predictions for the future

Artificial intelligence personal assistants who have in-depth knowledge of our health and legal history. The ability to transfer your data from one place to another seamlessly and without obstacles.

These are just some of the predictions for the future of the web made by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, on the occasion of the 35th anniversary of his invention.

Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the breakthrough technology in 1989 while working at CERN, the Swiss particle physics research center.

The London-based computer scientist has submitted a proposal for an information management system to help his colleagues share information with each other.

Berners-Lee continued to work on his idea for this information sharing system, and by 1991 the World Wide Web was up and running.

In 1993, Berners-Lee convinced CERN to release the Web protocol and source code into the public domain without patents or fees. Berners-Lee attributed the overwhelming success of the web to this decision.

Berners-Lee remembers what things were like when the web began 35 years ago. “When it started, I couldn’t have predicted it would be like this, this change,” he told CNBC.

However, he could tell that there were signs that the web would grow very soon. Traffic to the very first website, info.cern.ch, was “growing by a factor of 10 every year, thus doubling every four months.”

“We lost track of the logs because they got cut,” Berners-Lee recalls. “Now this is going to be serious. We need to make sure it doesn’t collapse.”

In the decades since the web was created, Berners-Lee sees some of the negatives that have occurred. First, social media feeds adapted by AI algorithms made people “feel angry, upset, or hateful,” he says.

Meanwhile, the ease of producing content on social media platforms and creating new websites and blogs has led to “disempowerment” for people and companies – and a loss of ownership over our data, he adds.

But Berners-Lee still has some optimism for the future. Here are some of his key predictions about what the Web will look like in the next 35 years.

Prediction 1: Everyone will have an AI personal assistant

One of Berners-Lee’s big predictions is that artificial intelligence will transform the way we interact with the web.

With the arrival of generative AI tools like Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT, tech companies are betting that consumers will be much more engaged with digital chatbots to get the information they need and help them produce written materials and even code .

There are already companies trying to reimagine what our interaction with the web will look like using AI-powered devices, including Samsung with its Galaxy S24 smartphone and US startup Humane AI with its Pin wearable device.

Berners-Lee thinks that one day we will have AI assistants working for us, similar to our doctors, lawyers and bankers.

“Some people worry about whether, 35 years from now, artificial intelligence will be more powerful than us,” Berners-Lee told CNBC via a Zoom video call last week.

“One of the things I predict — but it’s something we may have to strive for — is that you’ll have an AI assistant, who you can trust, and who will work for you, like a doctor,” Berners-Lee said.

Robert Blumofe, Akamai’s Global Chief Technology Officer, said he believes the Web will cease to be something used by humans and that artificial intelligence agents will take the reins on our behalf.

“You can imagine a world a few years from now where the web is a realm of artificial intelligence agents and humans are no longer using the web effectively,” Blumofe told CNBC in an interview last week.

“Everything would be done through AI agents; you would never go directly to your online bank account, or your online healthcare provider, or any e-commerce site.”

Akamai was founded in response to a challenge issued by Berners-Lee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in early 1995 to create a new way to deliver Web content to end users more quickly.

Blumofe still thinks we’ll go online for entertainment TV shows, movies and video games. But he is convinced that in the future many of the daily functions of our online lives will be handled by artificial intelligence.

“Human beings can return to our lives in the physical world greeting each other face-to-face as a physical experience, rather than a virtual experience,” he said.

Prediction 2: We will take true ownership of our data across all platforms, including virtual reality

Another thing Berners-Lee envisions is a network where we will all have full control of our data.

So instead of ceding ownership of our data to Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and other tech giants, we will instead be able to own our data through a data store, or “pod.”

“You’ll think of your data pod as your digital space, you’ll think of it as something you’re very comfortable with,” explains Berners-Lee.

Pods are a technology that Berners-Lee is working on with his startup Inrupt.

Inrupt is behind something called the Solid protocol, which “aims to fundamentally change the way web applications work today, resulting in real data ownership and better privacy.”

In 2022, the company raised $30 million from venture capital firms including Forte Ventures, Akamai, and Glasswing Ventures.

In Berners-Lee’s vision for the web of the future, you will be able to use your digital pod to access all your essential applications, such as email via your phone, but also your laptop, desktop computers and screens larger like televisions.

Berners-Lee added that his idea is to have a series of “trusted apps” that allow us to communicate with each other to share information and accomplish important tasks much faster.

Take, for example, purchasing flights. Berners-Lee predicts that the future experience of the web will be one in which you can use your wallet to purchase flights from a flight aggregator and then give it access to the data you entrust to it to make plans for what to do at your convenience. destination.

“All your to-do lists, calendar events and so on, and all the different parts of your data, will come together, so the ability to live your life becomes much more powerful.”

Chintan Patel, chief technology officer at software company Cisco in the United Kingdom, said he believes the web is moving to a more open place where information can be shared more easily.

“Even as we have seen the web become increasingly fragmented with increasingly isolated platforms, in many cases more information is being collected, sold and even misused,” Patel said.

However, he noted that OpenAI’s ChatGPT – and many other popular generative AI tools – are powered by data from the open web.

“For all its shortcomings, the web has brought many more benefits to society and made many more things possible,” Patel said.

Berners-Lee expects his vision of the web to take a step further with virtual and mixed reality, where the physical and digital worlds interact through powerful headsets, according to Berners-Lee.

“You can do things with a VR headset, and then when you take the VR headset off, you can do it with a huge screen,” he said. “And every time you move, you can pick up your phone and the experience will be unique. It should switch seamlessly between different devices.”

Mixed reality is a new dimension for web access, which experts predict we will become increasingly accustomed to over time.

“There will be big changes in terms of serious digital connectivity,” Chintan Patel, chief technology officer at enterprise technology company Cisco in the UK, told CNBC in an interview.

“At that point it will be called a form of spatial computing and spatial environment that will not be something we are looking for, but an immersive experience that will be delivered to us.”

Prediction 3: A large tech company could be broken up

Another thing Berners-Lee says could happen in the future is a large tech company being forced to break up.

Last week, the European Union’s landmark Digital Markets Act (DMA), which forces tech giants to change their platforms to allow competing products to thrive, officially came into force, in an important step that, according to supporters, will lead to a healthier technological competitive landscape. .

If a technology company breaches its obligations under the DMA, the European Commission can apply some substantial legal measures. This includes fines of up to 10% of a company’s global annual revenue or 20% for repeat offenders.

In some extreme cases, the Commission can require the dissolution of companies, although most antitrust lawyers say that outcome is unlikely, given the legal hurdles Brussels may face.

Berners-Lee said he always prefers that tech companies “do the right thing on their own” before regulators intervene. “This has always been the spirit of the Internet.”

He uses the example of the Data Transfer Initiative, a private initiative launched in 2018 and now supported by the likes of Google, Apple and Meta, to encourage the portability of photos, videos and other data between their platforms.

“Maybe companies were pushed a little bit by the possibility of regulation,” Berners-Lee said. “But this was an independent thing.”

However, he added: “Things are changing so rapidly. Artificial intelligence is changing very, very rapidly. There are monopolies in artificial intelligence. Monopolies have changed quite rapidly in the web.”

“Maybe at some point in the future, agencies will have to work to break up big companies, but we don’t know what the company will be,” Berners-Lee said.