Open web vs AI: what can W3C do?

At this week’s W3C Advisory Committee meeting, I ran a breakout session on what to do about threats to the open web. We had an interesting conversation. Many interesting points were raised, and some disagreed the web needs saving at all. Disclosure: as the breakout was part of a Member-confidential event, I generalised and synthesised what was raised, and left out attributions to specific individuals, except where I explicitly asked permission (Members can view the minutes). Wait, what threats? Indeed, this session was inspired by earlier sessions at W3C and IETF. I’m not Mark Nottingham, but I really wanted this breakout to happen and discuss possible ways forward in the context of W3C, so I would just go and propose it. Let’s first consider the problem at hand. A major reason for the web’s success is that it is open in many ways: it’s powered by open standards, it’s open for everyone to publish on (for fun, fame and/or profit), and it’s open for everyone to read. Perfect. However……