The inventor of the web believes that each person will have their own artificial intelligence. Helpers like ChatGPT
More control over your data and your personal AI. assistant. They're all part of a vision for the future of the web, according to its inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Inrupt CEO John Bruce.
Inrupt is a company that aims to bring the inventors of the web the original vision of the way the internet should work. A different way forward for the internet. The goal is for users to have a single login across different products and services on the Internet.
The data will be stored in "pods", which are containers for storing someone's personal data online. They can give a website or service access to their pod, or data silo.
More control over your data. no blockchain. And your personal AI assistant, such as ChatGPT.
These are all part of a vision for the future of the web, according to Internet inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee and CEO of Inrupt John Bruce, who spoke on CNBC's Beyond The Valley podcast published on Friday.
Inrupt is a company they co-founded that aims to bring web inventors an original vision of how the internet should work.
When he invented the Web in 1989, Berners-Lee said, "If you play geeky enough, you can get yourself a computer. You can put a Web server on it, you can connect it to the Internet. And you can have a website."
"The spirit of the web has been incredibly empowering," he said.
But in his view, something has gone wrong since then, with power now concentrated in the hands of large internet companies.
Well, everyone is on Facebook
So they don't have a website. Berners-Lee said they all use Mark Zuckerberg's website.
"When people search for you on Facebook, you don't really control what they see... Mark Zuckerberg's algorithms control what news is fed to them as they look through your stuff," he told CNBC.
"It's very frustrating. It's very useful for Facebook. They have a lot of data about the people they use to target them with ads... But what we've lost is the ability for individuals to have the power."
Data control
solve it? A product that allows users to control their data and how it is used. Currently, Internet companies collect data on users virtually, as a way to use their services.
But Berners-Lee and Bros. startup Inrupt is taking a different path forward. The goal is for users to have a single login across different products and services on the Internet.
The data will be stored in so-called “pods,” which are essentially containers for storing personal data on the Internet. Individuals can give a website or service access to their pod, or data silo, instead of websites taking data by default.
The system is built on an open internet protocol called Solid.
"This is the 'yin' and 'yang' of Inrupt, which is personal empowerment. And the opportunity for individuals to take more control of their role on the web," Bruce said in an interview with CNBC's Beyond the Valley.
Such an idea may require purchase from large Internet operators. But Bruce said there is an "endless movement" from companies to get more data on users, so they can target products and services to them. But he said the endeavor shows diminishing returns for companies.
The other way to do this is instead of blindly figuring out, "Are you the potential candidate for my product or service?" “What if I just ask you in a legitimate way? And tell me,” Bruce said, referring to the idea that users would be able to share with companies whatever data they wanted from their own computer.
Users will also need to change their behavior, and there should be a desire to control their data in this way. Berners-Lee admitted that this change will not come overnight but rather "little by little".
Your personal artificial intelligence assistant
In a wide-ranging Beyond The Valley episode, Bruce and Berners-Lee also talked about OpenAI's new AI product ChatGPT.
Powered by Microsoft, ChatGPT is an AI-powered chatbot that responds to users' questions.
Users can turn on their own AI, like their personal version of Amazon's Alexa or Apple's Siri, Berners-Lee said, when they have their own data clipboard.
That's because in the future Berners-Lee sees, users will have all kinds of data stored in their pods — from fitness information to online shopping habits. AI can use all that data to learn and be able to help the user.
“Sometimes you have the full gamut of data — all the data about your collaborative work, your coffee cups, your projects, your dreams. And the books you read and… your whole life, that's up to you that you're running AI on that,” Berners-Lee said.
Web3 or Web 3.0?
What Berners-Lee and Bruce are working on at Inrupt is part of the future of the internet.
Some have called it Web3, which proponents say will be a decentralized version of the Internet — one that isn't dominated by a few powerful players like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Many Web3 advocates suggest that it will be built on some type of blockchain technology. Blockchain is the technology that first appeared with Bitcoin but has evolved since then.
But Berners-Lee is eager to call the next generation of the Internet Web 3.0, emphasizing the point.
He said, “It is not a blockchain.”
Web3 proponents suggest that blockchain can be used to support the future of the Internet. But Berners-Lee said the technology is not fast enough and does not provide enough privacy.
He also said that cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are "only speculative".
Gavin Wood, founder of blockchain infrastructure company Parity Technologies, coined the term “Web 3.0.”
Wood spoke to CNBC last year about his vision of the future of the web on a previous episode of Beyond the Valley. He called for blockchain technology as part of shaping the web in the future.