AI needs to be democratised and made accessible for all: Cloudflare CEO

Addressing the India AI Impact Summit, Cloudflare's CEO Matthew Prince also highlighted the importance of building sustainable business models around AI, which fairly compensates people for their work

Cloudflare's Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Matthew Prince on Friday called for artificial intelligence (AI) to be democratised and backed by sustainable business models for inclusive growth.

 

Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Prince said that the current trajectory risks concentrating power in the hands of a few firms. He further drew parallels with the invention of the printing press, which he described as a transformative technology that spread rapidly across Europe and the world beyond it because it was not centrally controlled.

 

Comparing AI with the same, he said, "This should not be a technology which is controlled by five companies. It should be 500,000 companies, and those companies should be spread around the world". 

 

 

Prince also highlighted the importance of building sustainable business models around AI which fairly compensate people for their work. "We need to make sure that content creators, journalists, academics and researchers can be compensated for the hard work that they do to create their content, rather than just having that content taken, regurgitated and spit back through AI systems," he said.

 

He also said that the traditional internet model, which included content creation, driving traffic and eventually monetising through ads or subscriptions, is fading. AI systems scrape vast amounts of content while sending back minimal traffic, putting pressure on publishers and small businesses, he said. 

 

Prince also said that AI should respect local cultures and languages, not homogenise them. "We don't want to make the mistake of merely Americanising the world. Instead, we want to honour the culture of all of those places around the world and honour those things that have made us unique. AI shouldn't remove our humanity. It should accelerate it and enhance it," he added.