Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the Internet, AI and the Future of Humanity (Part Two)

Summary

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Intelligence Squared – Sir Tim Berners-Lee on the Internet, AI and the Future of Humanity (Part Two)

Date: September 28, 2025
Host: Tanya Breyer
Guest: Sir Tim Berners-Lee
Location: Cadogan Hall, London

Episode Overview

In this second part of a special live event, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web, joins Tanya Breyer for a wide-ranging conversation covering the impact of social media platforms, misinformation, data privacy, the future of artificial intelligence, and his vision for a healthier digital future. The episode is driven by audience questions and spotlights Berners-Lee’s sense of responsibility, optimism, and ongoing work on the Solid protocol and his new memoir, This Is for Everyone. The event balances critical reflection on today’s internet with stories from Berners-Lee’s personal life and vision for tomorrow.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Platforms, Responsibility, and Harm ([03:05])

• Social Media Algorithms and Harm

  • Berners-Lee argues platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, and WhatsApp hold immense power and therefore great responsibility for preventing harm, especially around young people and mental health.
  • Quote:

    "With that power, you have a lot of responsibility. So you should make sure that your own systems don't hurt teenage girls... make the advertising systems, don't let people train the advertising to deliberately send beauty ads to teenage girls who are worried about their body image and so on." (Sir Tim Berners-Lee, [03:26])

• Accountability

  • Berners-Lee highlights how platforms have not shouldered enough responsibility and calls for more active measures to prevent harm.

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2. Data Ownership and the Solid Protocol ([05:21])

• The Solid Protocol: A Vision for Data Stewardship
  • Berners-Lee introduces Solid, a web protocol giving users true ownership and control over their data through interoperable “data pods.”
  • Solid allows users to store, control, and share personal data (like medical records) independently of proprietary platforms.
  • Quote:

    "It gives you control of your data. It means as a citizen, as an individual, you have the right to own your own data... Solid says, let's have a system where any software, no matter who it's written by, it will be able to store data in either iCloud or GCloud or whatever... If you want to share your data with your doctor, you can." (Sir Tim Berners-Lee, [05:21])

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3. Personal Reflections and Influence of Rosemary Leith ([08:22])

• Berners-Lee credits his wife, Rosemary Leith, for order, insight, and sparring in both personal and professional spheres, including the co-founding of the Web Foundation.
  • Quote:

    "She brings order where there is chaos... she's a bit of intellectual sparring partner, to be frank. And I love the insight that she tends to have into people." ([08:22])

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4. Audience Q&A – Foundational Questions on the Web

• Why the Web is Free ([10:11]):

  • Without making the web free, its adoption and innovation would have stagnated. There might have been a closed, commercially monopolized environment instead.
    • Quote:

      "If I hadn't made it free, then we wouldn't be using it... we wouldn't have had that huge exponential growth of people getting on the Internet." ([10:11])

• Teaching Coding in the Age of AI ([11:31]):

  • Coding remains valuable for understanding, coordinating, and controlling AI-driven systems.
    • Quote:

      "Even if you have a lot of coding done by AI... you need people who understand coding to be able to control the AIs and run those farms of coders." ([11:31])

• Information vs. Misinformation ([12:28]):

  • Initial belief: technology is neutral. On reflection, technology’s neutrality is an illusion; design choices deeply affect society.
    • Quote:

      "We realized, in fact, when you make technology, it's not neutral. Technology is very, very interconnected with people, with ideas, with spirit of how people collaborate or don't." ([12:28])

• Regrets or Redesigns ([14:01]):

  • Would create a new, better-run domain name system due to flaws in the current commercial model.
    • Quote:

      "If I go back, then maybe I make my own domain name system, which would be running in a more civilized way." ([14:01])

• Internet’s Golden Age ([15:09]):

  • Berners-Lee’s optimistic, cheeky answer: “Ooh, next year.” ([15:09])

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5. Desires for the Web’s Future ([15:34])

• Envisions a shift from “attention economy” (addictive feeds and advertising) to an “intention economy” (users direct their needs, attracting meaningful, bid-based responses).
  • Quote:

    "The attention economy is about trying to grab your attention, try to hold you on a device... The intention economy is when you go to the world and explain to it what you want... And it's much more healthy." ([15:38])

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6. AI-Generated Content and Digital Provenance ([17:21])

• Concerned about machine-authored knowledge eclipsing human-authored content—sees value in cryptographic signatures to authenticate both written work and imagery.
  • Quote:

    "I want to be able to right click on something... and see that it's actually used cryptography to digitally sign the things... I agree, I'm worried about that sort of thing." ([17:21])

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7. The Addictive Nature of Platforms ([18:49])

• Berners-Lee is wary of platforms and algorithms that promote addictive behaviors and “doomscrolling”; he advocates for minimizing these features.
  • Quote:

    "If you spend time on the Internet on learning things, collaborating with people then that's great. If you spend time just doomscrolling through some addictive feed, then that's not good." ([18:49])

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8. Tech Titans and Responsibility ([19:31])

• Questions responsibility of Big Tech leaders and platforms, especially around safety, misinformation, and tragedy prevention.
  • Quote:

    "I worry that... there are concerns that Facebook as a company is not... taking their responsibility seriously for making a space which is safe for teenagers." ([20:18])

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9. Examples of the Web for Good ([21:42])

• Praises Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, and GitHub as collaborative, positive forces on the web.
  • Quote:

    "I think I tend to pick things like Wikipedia, obviously. OpenStreetMap... and places like GitHub." ([21:42])

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10. Regulation and Addictive Algorithms ([25:34])

• Supports regulating, even outlawing, the creation of overtly addictive system designs and algorithms, albeit acknowledging complexity of enforcement.

  • Quote:

    "If, say, somebody in the European Union decided to make it illegal, then I think there'll be... it would be a challenge to define it. But on the other hand, it is definable and there's lots of academic papers about it." ([25:47])

• Skeptical about under-16 bans due to challenges around age verification and privacy. ([26:36])

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11. Collaboration in AI ([27:21])

• Endorses the idea of a global, collaborative “CERN-for-AI” to balance development and societal oversight—a response to competitive secrecy between major AI firms.
  • Quote:

    "Some people have suggested that there should be a thing like CERN... I think that would be great if we could have something like that for AI." ([27:21])

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12. Raising Digital-Age Children ([28:39])

• Draws on family experience: foster curiosity, track achievements, and practice “benevolent negligence”—giving children safe autonomy.
  • Quote:

    "Let them play unsupervised, but just make sure they're okay." ([28:44])

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13. Experiences with Big Tech ([30:02])

• Major tech companies (Netscape, Microsoft, Google) never tried to “reel him in,” he states plainly.

14. The Joy of Coding and Advice for Youth ([30:24])

• Coding: Fun and rewarding, likened to “hitting dopamine receptors” when solving problems.

  • Quote:

    "Coding is fun because... you get this. So whereas you finish writing the piece of code and you hit go. And it works or it doesn't work. And on a good day, it works. And that feeling... is just a very satisfying feeling." (Sir Tim Berners-Lee, [30:24])

• Advice: Opt for STEM, embrace math, code, follow curiosity.

  • Quote:

    "I think revel in the STEM in the world and code as well." ([31:31])

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15. AI and Superintelligence ([33:11])

• Threat to Humanity? Berners-Lee warns that building a machine smarter than humans is plausible and containment/oversight is needed.
  • Quote:

    "If you build something that's smarter than you... then you have potentially a problem. You have to contain it." ([33:11])

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16. Recognition, Responsibility, and Optimism ([34:21]–[34:59])

• He sees awards as carrying responsibility to create a better future, not just as honors reflecting on the past.

  • Quote:

    "It's responsibility, I think, hence the book being... not just about the past, but about the future and plotting a future direction." ([34:21])

• Closing message: Encourages listeners to collaborate, build positive web tools, and maintain optimism.

  • Quote:

    "It's optimistic because it charts a path... in which... we can collaborate, we can fix problems, we can fix climate change, we can solve the problems... Build things which foster creativity, foster collaboration and also compassion in fact, as well." ([34:59])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Technology is not in general neutral.” ([12:28])
• “If I hadn't made it free, then we wouldn't be using it.” ([10:11])
• “Next year.” (coy answer to the internet’s “best year”, [15:09])
• “Coding is just fun... some sort of dopamine receptors or something in your brain.” ([30:24])
• “If you build something that's smarter than you... then you have potentially a problem. You have to contain it.” ([33:11])
• “Let them play unsupervised, but just make sure they're okay.” ([28:44])
• “[Rosemary] brings order where there is chaos.” ([08:22])
• "Solidprotocol.org" ([21:15]) – repeated frequently as his vision for the next big thing.

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:05] Social platform responsibility for harms
• [05:21] Data ownership and Solid protocol
• [08:22] Personal reflections on Rosemary Leith
• [10:11] Why the Web is Free
• [12:28] Technology's neutrality, spread of misinformation
• [14:01] What he’d redesign: domain names
• [15:09] The Web’s “best year”
• [15:38] From Attention to Intention Economy
• [17:21] AI content, digital signatures, and trust
• [18:49] Addictive platforms and doomscrolling
• [20:18] Tech titans and responsibility
• [21:42] Berners-Lee’s favorite positive web uses
• [25:47] Regulating addictive algorithms
• [27:21] CERN-for-AI ideas
• [28:44] Parenting and digital curiosity
• [30:24] Coding as enjoyment
• [31:31] Advice for young people
• [33:11] Superintelligent AI and risks
• [34:21] Recognition as responsibility
• [34:59] Closing message of optimism

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Tone and Style

The discussion balances technical insight, ethical reflection, pragmatic optimism, and a touch of humor—true to Tim Berners-Lee’s thoughtful, earnest style. Audience questions spur both deeply considered and personal responses, encouraging practical philosophy for the future of humanity online.

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Summary prepared for listeners seeking the full scope and spirit of the episode, highlighting when and how Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s voice points the way forward for the web, AI, and society.

Transcript

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[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Tuesday on NBC. Jimmy Fallon and Bozma St. John host the highly anticipated new competition.

[Jimmy Fallon]

I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands.

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[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

This is the battle for the next big idea.

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This is not Play Play.

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[Jimmy Fallon]

I'm so excited to embark on this.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Adventure with all of you.

[Jimmy Fallon]

May the best idea win on Brand with Jimmy Fallon.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Series premiere Tuesday on NBC.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti for this episode. We're rejoining for Part two of our recent live event with the founder of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners Lee. Berners Lee joined us recently at Cadogan hall in London to discuss the invention of the web, the future of AI and humanity, and his new memoir, this Is for Everyone. He was in conversation with CNBC broadcaster Tanya Breyer. If you haven't heard Part one, do just jump back an episode and get up to speed. And in the spirit of Sir Tim's invention, we're also making the video from the event free and available to all. You can find the link in the episode description where you can also find the episode transcript. Let's rejoin the conversation now live at Cadogan hall in London.

[Tanya Breyer]

We're also seeing and have seen the impact of toxic social media algorithms. There's particular concern about the harmful effects on young people on mental health. Who do you think should be accountable for that, Tim, and how can we fight that?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

In general, I think that if you have a platform, if you're running a platform and I put in something nasty, something hateful, and you as a platform, you multiply the number of people it gets to and if you do that deliberately so that people more and more people on your platform feel hatred and as a result stay on the platform, then I think there's really no way to run a restaurant. If you're running a platform like X or Facebook or Instagram or or WhatsApp, then you're running a platform which has got a lot of power. With that power, you have a lot of responsibility. So you should make sure that your own systems don't hurt teenage girls, make the advertising systems, don't let people train the advertising to deliberately send beauty ads to teenage girls who are worried about their, their body image and so on. So yeah, in general there's a lot of responsibility. There's also responsibility of course for anybody who posts K Chin, but I think there's a lot of responsibility which has not been picked up from the platforms themselves.

[Tanya Breyer]

And of course we're talking about lot about misinformation, disinformation. What's your reaction to that? Do you feel it's created a potential threat to democracy? And can you tell us about your work with Solid and also your new business? You've actually got a commercial business as well.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

For once I in for innovation, for disruption and inwrap.com was available at the time we started the company all those years ago. So yes, Interrupt started in order to build better software which to build solid based around. Based around a paradigm called the Solid protocol. Solid protocol is like HTTP but it's an improvement. It gives you control of your data. It means as a citizen, as an individual, you have the right to own your own data. So you can run apps and the apps will store data in your own data wallet. We call it or we call it a data pod. It's a bit like so solid is a bit like when you. If you Apple software it'll store data in your icloud. If you use Google software, it'll store it in your G drive. If you use Microsoft software it'll store it in Your Microsoft cloud. So each of these systems has got their proprietary. You can't use Apple software on your G drive, you can't use Google software on your icloud and so on. So solid is a bit like saying, actually, that's really unfortunate. You can't do that. Solid says, let's have a system where any software, no matter who it's written by, it will be able to store data in either iCloud or GCloud or whatever cloud out there. So the solid world of data wallets is you can put any data in your. Like you can put it, you can put in your importantly, you can put it in your medical data. And so you can then share it with your doctor. You can put in and you can. And if you want to share your data with your doctor, you want to share your data with a team of people doing research, doing clinical trials who are trying to find cures for cancer, well, then you can share all your medical data with them. So Garfond is a so exciting new space and it's good to be building new. That's partly writing. Part of notification for writing the book is partly explaining about that. Don't just get worried about the bad things on the web. There are all these new things out there and solid is one of those.

[Tanya Breyer]

Things which is good and positive. Hopefully another positive time is in your Life, Tim, in 2008, when you met your future wife, Rosemary Leaf, and you co founded the web foundation together, how did meeting Rosemary change your life? Ooh, I'm only saying that because she's right here. And by the way, it's her birthday today. Happy birthday, Rosemary.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Actually, her birthday, yes. We negotiated for a start date for this book which wasn't Rosemary's birthday, but Millenwa insisted that they wanted the ninth. So the nice Happy birthday, Rosemary. So Rosemary has changed my life in amazing ways. She's put a huge amount of effort into not just the web foundation, but a huge number of things in my life. The book is just one of them. So she's in a way, she brings order where there is chaos. Well, she's a bit of intellectual sparring partner, to be frank. And I love the insight that she tends to have into people. So she's. So having her as my soulmate has been really special. Happy birthday, Rosemary.

[Tanya Breyer]

Well, Tim, there's so much more to talk to you about and I want to know about what you think about machines who are going to be controlling us soon and all of that, the future of humanity. I do, however, have to open it up now to our audience because I've been quite very selfish with time with you. So I'm going to ask the first question. Hopefully you've actually been scanning your QR codes. And I'm going to get some questions from all of you coming through. So the first one is from Adrian. Adrian wants to know you made the web free. How different do you think the online world would appear today if you had decided not to make it free?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

If I hadn't made it free, then we wouldn't be using it. So people wouldn't have. Wouldn't have picked it up. They would have. Maybe they would have used. Maybe Gopher. No, Gopher wasn't. So that there would have been a competition. Maybe. Basically we wouldn't have had that huge exponential growth of people getting on the Internet. Maybe sort of 20 years on, people would still be doing boring things on the Internet Internet instead of zooming around web pages. Or maybe they would have made. Maybe after a while somebody there would have been enough push to have free and open software. But you can imagine a world where it's owned by one company and that company ends up being the monopoly runner of the web as a system where you have to go to it every time you want to make a web page or a website or start a new web app. And so innovation would have been really slow.

[Tanya Breyer]

Thank you, Tim. We have a question from Ness. As a computer science teacher, I'd love to hear Sir Tim's thoughts on whether teaching coding is still a valuable skill to learn in this world of AI.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I think even if you have a lot of coding is done by AI, sometimes it'll be done by somebody who's coding with AI at their side. So as you're, you know, you, you may, you may do very little of the typing, AI may do a lot of the rest of it. But also you need to have the skills around. You have to understand what coding is. So other people are doing. If AIs are doing a lot of the coding still, you need people who understand coding to be able to control the AIs and run those farms of coders.

[Tanya Breyer]

I hope that answers your question. And from Claire, The WWW was clearly visionary predicted on the requirement for good information sharing. Did you ever consider its potential in terms of being used for the spread of bad information?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

That's interesting. Initially, after the X Consortium before me, the people running the X Consortium said that technology is neutral. So their mantra was technology is neutral. And so for the web, we said, well, technology, we took that out technology is neutral. And then we realized, and then, then in 2016, we realized maybe the web had actually been part of a system of manipulation of people to vote differently from how they would have done. And so then we realized, in fact, when you make technology, it's not neutral. Technology is very, very interconnected with people, with ideas, with spirit of how people collaborate or don't. And so technology, you can build technology which promotes good collaboration, like we do at mit, by the way, in the center for the Collaboration, Collaborative communication, just saying, the media Lab. So when you build, you can build systems which are collaborative and you can build systems which tend more to get people to fight each other. So that's technology is not in general neutral.

[Tanya Breyer]

Thank you for that. If you could redesign the web from scratch today, knowing everything we've learned over the past 35 years, what one principle or feature would you build in at the very foundation that's interesting.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

I have to say that probably, I think I probably build my own domain name system, because the domain name system, to get a website, you have to get a domain. I built it. So to get a website, you have to get a domain. To get a domain has been a pain because the.com was oversubscribed and there was domain name spotting. And domain name, the way the domain name marks has run has been pretty horrible. It does depend on which domain you're in. Org.uk maybe run well, but.org was just anybody. When you get to.org you don't know that somebody is a nonprofit, for example. So the way the domain names have been run. So, yeah, if I go back, then maybe I make my own domain name system, which would be running in a more civilized way.

[Tanya Breyer]

From Nathaniel, what year do you think was the Internet's best?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Ooh, next year.

[Tanya Breyer]

We hope so. From Marianne, what are your wishes for the future of the World Wide Web? What would you like to see implemented in the future and what negative aspects would you like to see eradicated?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Oh, that's a lot of questions in one.

[Tanya Breyer]

Yep.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

So the positive things. But I've talked to a certain extent about the solid protocol. I'd like to see systems deployed using the solid protocol in the positive way. I like to see. I'd like to see us move from what we call the attention economy to more of an intention economy. The attention economy is this battle for people's attention on any advertising system. So that tension economy is about trying to grab your attention, try to hold you on a device, trying to keep you scrolling through the things which you're addicted to the intention economy is when you go to the world and you go and you explain to it what you want and you say I want a vacation or I want to buy a car or something. And the intentional economy is when you put out there, this is a specification of the car I want to buy or the holiday I want to go on. And then you allow other companies, travel agents to come and bid, car dealers to bid so that you're in charge with the intended economy. And it's much more healthy. Doc sells by the way, was the person who invented those terms.

[Tanya Breyer]

And from Richard we have. As AI generated content becomes more prevalent online, do you see this creating a fundamental shift in the web's character from human authored to machine mediated knowledge?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Yes, I do worry about that. Okay. Yes, yes, I think so. One of the things we can do is you can track, you can track the problems to think which actually who human author that I want to be able to right click on something when it's published in a newspaper and see that it's actually used cryptography to digitally sign the things so that when you as a journalist, when you post something on the web you stamp it with a digital signature which says this is me, this journalist. I've written this. So when I'm reading it I can check. Yeah, this really was written by that journalist. And so that we. And similarly for pictures that they were, this picture was really taken by a given person. You could get a photograph which actually you can get a camera which does this. It automatically digitally stamps the photograph so you know who's taken it. So that sort of thing things I think are important, but I agree, I'm worried about that sort of thing.

[Tanya Breyer]

Well, we have another long one from David. When the Internet was first created, we the first users didn't know what to do with it. I remember dialing up then thinking, what now? Now so much of our life is run by the Internet, consumed by it. Do you think too much of our mental state space is taken up by.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

It, by the Internet in general? I don't think it. Well, if it's. Our mental space tends to be taken up by things which are addictive. So I don't use TikTok at all. People who do use TikTok tend to scroll through dates for a long time. So the addictive things. This is partly an answer to the other, the other question what things would I want to remove from the Internet? It will be the addictive things. So keep. If you spend time on the Internet on learning things, collaborating with people Then that's great. If you spend time just doom scrolling through some addictive feed, then that's not good.

[Tanya Breyer]

Do you trust Tim? The tech titans that we see, the Zuckerbergs of the world, the Elon Musk's of the world. I know you met Mark Zuckerberg a few years ago. What were your impressions of him?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

So this was a long time ago. I met him a couple of times, I think at Facebook. In fact, the first time I met him he was actually sick and we went around. So we went. Instead of going to Facebook offices, I went to his house which was around the corner, quite a reasonable house. And we all had chicken soul soup because he was sick. So that was my first impression of Mark. Since then we've had meetings between the web foundation and Mark.

[Tanya Breyer]

What do you think of him now?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

So now I worry that. I gather that there are concerns that Facebook as a company is not. And Instagram for that matter are not taking their responsibility seriously for making a space which is safe for teenagers, that.

[Tanya Breyer]

It'S not make it safe, not to.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Mention genocide, for example, in Myanmar. There are people who feel that the WhatsApp group where you were there and that it was the people who feel that Facebook, WhatsApp should have done something about that because they could see that that was going to happen.

[Tanya Breyer]

Well, from Fraser, we have a question. What are you as passionate about today as you were when you came up with the idea of the World Wide Web? What's the next big thing?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Well, the next big thing is a solid protocol. Solid protocol. You knew that though. Yeah. Solidprotocol.org solid protocol.

[Tanya Breyer]

There you have it from Simon. You spoke about the negatives and often people focus there. Can you give three of your favorite examples of the web's use that are positive and amazing for humanity?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Do you know, I've always refused to give my top three websites, but. But now it's all many years under the web. I think I tend to pick things like Wikipedia, obviously. OpenStreetMap, you probably know Wikipedia. You may not know OpenStreetMap, which is. Oh, I've got Jimmy in the front. So you have Jimmy to thank for Wikipedia. So yeah, it's my.

[Tanya Breyer]

Go to Jimmy. There he is.

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[Tanya Breyer]

Absolutely. And you don't want to name any others?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Well, all of the places like GitHub, I suppose, which where people go to collaborate over software and there's a very special place places.

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[Tanya Breyer]

Well from Alison if you had a chance to introduce the World Wide Web today, how would you do it? And how would you like for humanity to redirect their current use of it?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

I think I'd redirect our current use of it by by avoiding the addictive things. As I said.

[Tanya Breyer]

Yeah, it's very hard. I mean I was Watching one of your interviews you did yesterday, Tim, and you were saying that you should make these algorithms illegal. How does one do that?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Well, we know what addictive is. There's a course at Stanford University you can take on how to make an addictive system. So basically, it's fairly well defined. There are mathematical papers about it. And so if, say, somebody in the European Union decided to make it illegal, then I think there'll be. Yes, obviously it would be very tricky to enforce it and it would be a challenge to define it. But on the other hand, it is definable and there's lots of academic papers about it.

[Tanya Breyer]

So you think more regulation is what needed. I mean, Australia is going to ban certain parts of social media for under 16s. Do you agree with that?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Well, for me, what worries me about banning things under 16s is how do you know that somebody's under 16? The whole age verification system, if you have to get a government ID in order to go on the web, then I don't think that's the sort of thing which somebody in Britain would really go along with.

[Tanya Breyer]

I'll take another question now. It's from Crystal. You mentioned the W3C was a very successful way of bringing together the big players when the web emerged, especially around web standards. You alluded to AI not being as open to collaboration and adoption. What do you think can be done to incentivize this, to incentivize the AI people?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

That's interesting. It's really hard to seek because each of these AI companies is an independent company just going health reservoir for the prize of AGI AS or whatever they call it. And so it's very hard to imagine how to do that. Some people have suggested that there should be a thing like cern and how you get there, I don't know, but you can imagine somewhere like cern. CERN was actually put together after the Second World War because people were concerned about nuclear power being developed and then. And the power of splitting the atom was so great that they wanted it to be shared by all the countries coming together. So all the best nuclear scientists came together at CERN and they then sort of did all their discoveries together. So people suggested that we should have the same thing for AI. Yeah, I think that would be great if we. We could have something like that for AI. Okay.

[Tanya Breyer]

Collaboration from Ella. Do you have any advice for parents on how to raise curious children while avoiding the harms of modern technology?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Ooh.

[Tanya Breyer]

What do you say to your own children?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

What did mom and dad, how did they difficult I'm not an expert on parenting. I say that because somebody once. I once gave him suggestions about it. Somebody said that you have no right to do that. You're not an expert on parenting. But so how do. Well, things that mum and dad did, they kept track of. They had a book which they wrote in the things that we did so that we could be proud of them after. Afterwards, they read all the books on things like that. And I think one of the things Mum had a friend's phrase, like it was sort of benevolent negligence, sort of. In other words, let them play with our own supervise, but just make sure they're okay.

[Tanya Breyer]

Okay, we have a question from Kirill. A number of businesses profited greatly from your invention. Did any of them, Netscape, Microsoft, Google, try to reel you in?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Reel me in in the sense of that's what Kirill offer me a job. None of them have tried to reel me in.

[Tanya Breyer]

They didn't. They used everything. And from Luca, was coding the web fun? And why?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Yes, coding is fun. Coding is just fun. It's when you. It's the process in your brain when you're trying to solve a problem. You can imagine how different ways of solving the problem. You try a few out, you eliminate some of the ones which aren't going to work. You pick on the one which is going to work and then you write it all out. The coding is fun because I think it hits must be some sort of dopamine receptors or something in your brain. When you solve a problem, then you get an aha. You get this. So whereas you finish writing the piece of code and you hit go. And it works or it doesn't work. And on a good day, it works. And that feeling of. It's just a very satisfying feeling.

[Tanya Breyer]

It must be from. Domingo wants to know what advice for young people learning and creating for the web right now. Now, what's something you'd like them to take with them into the future?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Ooh, code. Because it's fun. So, yeah, I think stem, I suppose not just code. So get into math is fun. Math turns up everywhere that we learned when you're baking a cake and you have to. And you have a cake which was designed for. Recipe designed for a square tin and you have round tins sort of thing. Then there's always math that you can find in the world. There's always English you can find in the world. So I think revel in the stem in the world and code as well.

[Tanya Breyer]

We've got time just for a couple more questions, Tim. It was so wonderful to hear about your parents. What do you think they would say if they could see AI today?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

I think they would be absolutely shocked at how fast how well chatgpt worked. They would have. I was surprised. I think, well, Even people developing AI were shocked by the. When ChatGPT came out, I think everybody was shocked by how. So I think my parents would have been surprised.

[Tanya Breyer]

Yeah. Do you think are intelligent machines a threat to our humanity? Could we end up with a super intelligent that's smarter than us?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

I think if we build something, yeah, I think we could. Logically, when you build a machine, it has a certain level of intelligence. That intelligence is greater than or less than your own. I think people, just because you're building it out of transistors doesn't mean that it can't be smarter. So I think philosophically, if you build something that's smarter than you, more intelligent than you are, then you have potentially a problem. You have to contain it. So that's why having a CERN like place to contain the superintelligence, I think is a good idea.

[Tanya Breyer]

And just the final question from the audience, from Steph, what do you never get asked about that? You wish you did? And what's the answer? She wants to.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

To know as well, the solid protocol.

[Tanya Breyer]

Of course, of course, of course. Tim, you've been given so many awards, so many honors. What does that recognition mean to you?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Wow. It's responsibility, I think, hence the book being not just about the future, not just about the past, but about the future and plotting a future direction.

[Tanya Breyer]

And just finally, Tim, for our audience here in Cadogan hall and for those joining us from around the world, thank you so much. But I just want a message from you of optimism in this fragment, fragmented and polarized world that we find ourselves in at the moment. What is your message?

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

So my message is, well, buy the book. It's an optimistic book. It's optimistic because it charts a path, imagines the world will get there. I don't know, but it imagines the world in which we as individual citizens and consumers and have, and individuals have got more power, More. When we go onto the web, we can collaborate, we can fix problems, we can fix climate change, we can solve the problems, imagines the world's image, the world's immortal, better. There are people out there, you can find them who are working and you can help work towards those goals. Work on things like these protocols, work with other people. Use the web to collaborate, Use the web to build new things, Build things. Build things which are good. For humanity, build things which do not have addictive sides to them, but have collaborative things which build things which foster creativity, which foster creativity, foster collaboration and also compassion in fact, as well.

[Tanya Breyer]

So Tim, on behalf of the audience here at Cadogan hall and the audience joining us on our live streaming, thank you so much for sharing.

[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

Thank you Tanya, so much.

[Tanya Breyer]

Well, thank you for being with us here today, honestly. So Tim Van Lee, fantastic.

[Mia Sorrenti]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode's produced by me, Mia Sorrenti and it was edited by Mark Roberts for ad free episodes and full length recordings. Become a [e-mail] membership and to join us at future live events, head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full events program.

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[Tanya Breyer]

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[Sir Tim Berners-Lee]

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