Web inventor: Berners-Lee demands micropayments as compensation for AI training

Tim Berners-Lee believes he has found a way to compensate for the appropriation of third-party, human-generated content by systems with generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. "One way out could be micropayments," explained the 70-year-old in an interview with Die Zeit. This would not necessarily mean the end of the "free internet": "A large part would remain free, but you would have to pay for some areas."

Developers have already been working for years on systems in which the smallest amounts, fractions of a cent, are automatically paid for content when surfing, Sir Tim explained. The important thing is that the money goes directly to the creators. Berners-Lee sees this as a way of solving the problems that copyright law has so far failed to tackle, such as the low income of musicians via streaming services like Spotify.

"So far, we have not been good at remunerating creative people fairly," says the inventor of the World Wide Web: "Copyright law has failed in many respects." In the context of AI, these challenges are multiplying.

Berners-Lee has long advocated testing more alternative business models on the web, such as subscriptions and micropayments. In 2013, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which he heads, supported a group of experts in developing a standard for payments that is built directly into the fabric of the WWW. This should be just as open as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and replace payment processors such as PayPal. Just as anyone can offer and access websites via HTTP, the idea was that the payment protocol would enable the secure exchange of money.

Another relevant project is the GNU-Taler, which is to be tested primarily in Switzerland. The experiment is based on proposals by Digicash developer David Chaum. So far, however, such approaches to micropayments have found it difficult to establish themselves on the market.

Will AI develop an awareness?

Physicist and computer scientist Berners-Lee sees the "AI revolution" not only as a risk, but also as an opportunity. He has already used ChatGPT to help, in particular for "auto-completion" when writing blog articles or for troubleshooting when programming, he revealed. He wants transparency: "I have italicized the passages that come from the AI." The result was "not bad at all".

Basically, Berners-Lee envisions an AI that works exclusively for the user, similar to a doctor or lawyer who is obliged to a client.

When it comes to the question of whether an AI can develop a kind of consciousness, the web inventor follows the logic of Alan Turing. He assessed intelligence not according to what something is made of, but how it behaves. Sir Tim applies this to consciousness. For him, it is clear that we should treat systems that behave like conscious beings in the same way. The Brit is not convinced that only a human brain can have thoughts and a mind. The development of AI is proceeding like an unstoppable wave. Instead of stopping it, it should be channeled. A center like CERN could help to keep such powerful technologies under control and prevent misuse.

Josef Weizenbaum, a pioneer of AI research and developer of the chatbot Eliza, observed this field more critically. He was appalled at how people overinterpreted his program and other early AI systems and attributed human-like intelligence to them. The computer scientist saw the assumption that computers could develop a consciousness as "incredible nonsense" and megalomania. Humans are not computers, as their minds are the product of their experiences and social environment.

No friend of large online platforms

Berners-Lee sees the current dominance of a few large platforms such as Facebook, TikTok and Google as a result of the capitalist system. In his view, open markets almost always tend to form monopolies, which hinders competition and makes it difficult for young innovators to establish new networks. He considers regulation to be necessary to keep the power of these market forces in check.

To reclaim the web as a democratic space, the WWW creator's motto is that people must gain control over their own data. The main resource in digital capitalism is our data. To solve this problem, Berners-Lee, and his colleagues created the Solid protocol. It is designed to give users complete control over their data by storing it in pods or wallets. These digital wallets can contain financial transactions, health data and social media content. The user decides who has access to it.

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