News: 0180027036

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Tim Berners-Lee Says AI Will Not Destroy the Web (theverge.com)

(Monday November 10, 2025 @11:51AM (msmash) from the how-about-that dept.)


Tim Berners-Lee thinks AI will help the web, [1]not destroy it . The inventor of the World Wide Web has spent years warning about platform concentration and social media's corrosive effects, but he views AI differently. AI has accomplished what his Semantic Web project could not. The technology extracts structured data from websites regardless of how the information was formatted. Berners-Lee spent decades trying to convince database owners to make their systems machine-readable voluntarily. AI companies simply took the data anyway. They achieved the machine-readable internet through extraction rather than cooperation, but the result is the same.

Berners-Lee also weighed in on the growing browser competition in the market. OpenAI [2]released Atlas a few weeks ago . Perplexity has [3]launched Comet . Google has expanded AI features in Chrome. All these browsers run on Chromium, which Berners-Lee acknowledges is not ideal, but conceded that browser engines are expensive to build. He thinks Apple's decision to restrict iPhones to WebKit prevents web apps from competing with native apps.



[1] https://www.theverge.com/podcast/814552/tim-berners-lee-world-wide-web-ai-future-interview

[2] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/10/21/1725235/openai-debuts-ai-powered-browser-with-memory-and-agent-features

[3] https://slashdot.org/story/25/10/18/0437214/perplexitys-ai-browser-comet-is-now-free-with-big-marketing-deals-to-challenge-chrome


Time to switch to iPhone then (Score:3)

by Kisai ( 213879 )

Time to switch to iPhone then and keep that AI cruft off the phone.

In all seriousness "AI is enshittifying the web" at a rate that we're going to start seeing a lot more snake-eating-it's-tail AI's and eventually model collapses left and right.

Let's be real, Nobody needed "AI" and nobody wants "AI" except people who seek to monetize it, and even then the largest use case I've seen someone legitimately try and use it for is shit-posting on twitter things that no artist would want their name on.

Re: Time to switch to iPhone then (Score:2)

by blue trane ( 110704 )

Do you have AIDS (AI Derangement Syndrome)?

Re: (Score:2)

by bn-7bc ( 909819 )

You might consider not using AIDs as an acronym due to the being a rather nasty STI, lets not confuse things by overloading tharpt acronym

Re: Time to switch to iPhone then (Score:2)

by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

"Time to switch to iPhone then and keep that AI cruft off the phone."

How would that help? You don't seem to have been keeping up with what apple is doing to your precious toy.

Re: (Score:3)

by shanen ( 462549 )

People believe what they want to believe. He believe iPhones are super-sexy.

Unfortunately right now I believe we're about to get AI judges and AI cops. Good intentions under the old motto of "Justice delayed is justice denied." Instant "justice" for each of our crimes, and homo sapiens should be extinct within a week or two.

Me? I'll go down for aggravated littering with cold-blooded malice. Someone will hand me an ad for an iPhone and I'll throw it in the street.

Tim Berners-Lee Says AI Will Not Destroy the Web (Score:3)

by Growlley ( 6732614 )

adverts allready have,

AI already is destroying the web (Score:2)

by BrendaEM ( 871664 )

AI is destroying not only the internet, but the quality of humanity's information, as a whole. AI, the fishing rod of the rich.

Re: (Score:2)

by bn-7bc ( 909819 )

The internet and the web are to different things, noramally I wouldn't point it out but this is slashdot amd us nerds shuld really not confuse them. Fair enough the web depends on the internet as a data network, but so does Netflix ( at least for lastt mile, ler's not confuse the issue with cdns rouning their private vans)

OrangeGPT (Re: inventor of WWW) (Score:1)

by Tablizer ( 95088 )

"I invented everything wonderful! I even invented Al Gore, believe me! Radios and TV's used to have big glass tits and wankers that glowed orange, such a wonderful color, but they were big and heavy, like Rosie O'Donnell, so nobody wanted them.

So I got one of my bone spurs med tablets, soaked it in Diet Coke for 3 days, stuck wires into it, and it became the very first Trans Sister. I hated that woke name so called it Capacitor instead, and even made it flux. Some say it can go back in time, which I may do

The web is now "Chrome Apps" (Score:2)

by xack ( 5304745 )

Firefox is in 2% irrelevance and WebKit basically just backports Chromium features that don't compete with the App Store. Everywhere else is Chrome which has become the total web replacement. iPhone already adopted Google's AI, it is only a matter of time before WebKit gets replaced as Apple seeks to save money by not having to maintain WebKit anymore. Servo and Ladybird will be around for the few experimenters left but I see no future but 99.99% Chrome.

Re: (Score:2)

by bn-7bc ( 909819 )

Also adseece got bammed by the EU iirc, unless thst has been resolved I eat that kind of impacted their revenue

News (Score:3)

by Thelasko ( 1196535 )

The news here is Tim Berners-Lee apparently hasn't used his invention in the past 5 years. Everyone who has knows it's dying.

Where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to
examine the laws of heat.
-- Christopher Morley