Web Inventor Tim Berners-Lee Asks: ‘Who Does AI Work For?’
At the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, raised a crucial question about the future of artificial intelligence: “The question is, who does it work for?”
Berners-Lee, speaking on a panel about robotics, highlighted the potential conflicts of interest inherent in AI development. He emphasized that while AI systems can be reliable and accurate, their creation by large corporations raises the question of whose interests they ultimately serve.
Berners-Lee drew a parallel with professions like medicine and law. He noted that doctors and lawyers, though often employed by organizations, have a primary duty to their patients and clients, respectively. AI, however, presents a different scenario. He questioned whether an AI assistant helping with vacation planning or product ordering is truly working in the user’s best interest or is, instead, nudging them toward choices that benefit the manufacturer.
“I want AIs to work for me to make the choices that I want to make,” Berners-Lee stated. “I don’t want an AI that’s trying to sell me something.”
He challenged robotics experts on the panel to consider these potential conflicts, urging them to “Always ask an AI, ‘who do you work for?’ Whose better interests are you pursuing in your interests and your decisions?”
Lessons from the Early Web
Berners-Lee contrasted the current environment surrounding AI with the early days of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. Back then, companies like Microsoft and Netscape collaborated with researchers and activists to form the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which established the infrastructure for the open internet.
“All these companies were building the Web together, and we made it together,” he said. This collaborative approach, he argued, is missing in today’s generative AI landscape.
Berners-Lee observed that companies are currently in competition, striving for “superintelligence,” without a comparable standards-setting organization like the W3C. He suggested AI developers create a similar group or a structure like CERN, the intergovernmental nuclear research laboratory in Europe.
“We have it for nuclear physics,” Berners-Lee said. “We don’t have it for AI.”
