“The next wave is about artificial intelligence,” Verdegem said. “Companies and governments will use all that data to train algorithms to come up with better deep learning models. And as (Russian President) Vladimir Putin once said, the person who is in charge of artificial intelligence will dominate the world.”

But Berners-Lee and his business partner, John Bruce, have come up with an alternative to fight back against this consolidation of power.

GAFAM – Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft – in the U.S. and the so-called BAT – Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent – in China.”