How AI is breaking the internet (and what to do about it) | Matthew Prince

you're listening to ted talks daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day i'm your host elise hugh some of us are old enough to remember a world before the internet but for a whole lot of people now it's just like the air the infinite thing you can ask anything of that answers back in an instant you look for something a page pops up you never really wonder how it all got there or who pays for it those questions do have answers and it's been the same for almost the entire history of the internet the web is driven by traffic traffic has been the currency of the internet and that's what everyone has built their content to try to achieve that was tech entrepreneur matthew prince matthew co-founded and leads cloud fair one of the companies that helps run the internet's infrastructure in his talk he explains how the whole system actually works you search for something you click a link you land on a website and those clicks pay for it all the news you need the research you rely on the open web but this might not be the case for much longer at least according to matthew he thinks ai is about to break it all of it today we have something very different we have something that's closer to what i would call an answer engine where you're getting the answer directly on the page when the answer shows up right there on the screen you never click through anymore which means the traffic that funds journalism research the whole open web starts to dry up this has devastating consequences on people's lives offline but matthew sees a way out he argues the same shift that's breaking the old internet could build a better one instead of an internet that rewards the cheapest most inflammatory content he wants to see one that pays people to create something genuinely new he even has a name for the award he'd give them that's coming up right after a short break and now our ted talk of the day the internet is an absolute miracle and for the last 30 years it has been driven by a very consistent and fundamental business model that has given us everything amazing about the internet and everything not so amazing as well i run a company that provides a lot of the internet's infrastructure and as a result means three things one we've had this unique view into what is going on online two we care enormously about the success of the internet and three i think i can share with you some of how that underlying business model is changing we're going to talk about the success of the internet and we're going to talk about the success of the internet and why it's important because as that business model changes it's going to have a dramatic effect on what the internet is but beyond that on what content is created on what journalists get compensated for on how researchers are able to do their research and so it's up to all of us as that business model of the internet changes to make sure it changes for something we want and can learn from the mistakes that we had in the past so to review the past let's look at what that business model was and we all know it basically which was the internet was built on we took an idea and we put it online and then we drove traffic to that idea and then from that traffic we either sold things subscriptions or ads and it's been pretty amazing to watch how that has very much driven the growth of the web and the growth of the internet over time and it's survived a number of dramatic platform shifts we all started browsing the internet on browsers on our desktop or laptop that transitioned to be increasingly social media which was the interface through which we consumed content and then we went to consuming it through our mobile devices and yet through all of this the humble banner ad has basically financed it all traffic has been the currency of the internet and that's what everyone has built their content to try to achieve and if we want to look for who's the superman who's the superhero that has driven the internet for the last 27 years uh that has been google google built not only the search engine to index how the internet works but then they built the monetization system to actually ensure that content creators got paid for the traffic that they generated the internet owes a ton to google in the last 27 years but the world is changing ai is the topic du jour and what i think a lot of people don't understand is that ai is yet another platform shift think about how much more of the way that you consume information already is looking at your ai chatbot and how much more of that will be the case in the future we can see it and a lot of things we do kind of normally like this is a google search from the early days of google not even that long ago when i would type something in like when was the first ted conference and then i would get back basically a treasure map where i would have to continue to do the work in order to be able to get back to the search engine and then i would have to go back and look for the answer and then i would have to go back and click on the links generating traffic to find what my answer was the search wasn't over when the results returned that was just the beginning and you had to follow the treasure map that's what a search engine is today we have something very different we have something that's closer to what i would call an answer engine where you're getting the answer directly on the page and what's amazing about that is that as a consumer it's better for you but what's terrifying about it is that a lot of people don't even know what a search engine is and they don't know what a search engine is and they don't even know what a search engine is and they don't even know what a search engine is with google what is it with open ai 750 times harder what is it with anthropic 32 000 times harder the answer engines are giving the answers and people aren't following the footnotes and this was 18 months ago what's happened since has it got better or worse do you trust ai more today than you did 18 months ago the answer is most people do and as a result it's actually gotten twice as hard to get traffic to content that's there you're not following the footnotes anymore you're actually trusting that the ai systems are giving you the right answer and that's destroying media across the board we're seeing reported numbers where media companies are seeing between a 90 and 30 decline in the traffic to their sites and this is extremely problematic because i think journalists deserve to be able to eat and fundamentally if the internet is built on traffic and this new business model isn't delivering traffic then i'm not sure how media is going to survive unless we create a new business model and the good news is the ai companies want journalism they want people out there doing research we all want journalism we want people out there doing research and so i think i'm actually kind of optimistic that there might be a solution to this problem and here's here's the way i think about it for the first time in human history we have a mathematical model of all of human knowledge it's not perfect but that's essentially what all of the llms are and i think about like a giant block of swiss cheese there's a lot of cheese that's what we know but we also have a lot of holes in the cheese those are the things we don't know and the thing that is incredible is that what all of you want what i want what the ai companies want is they want people out there filling in the holes in the cheese they don't want you writing the story that has already existed they want you actually creating new knowledge and the ai companies i've talked to every one of them they're all willing to actually pay for people who are creating new knowledge creating new ideas ideas worth spreading that's what this new system would reward compare that to what the business model of media is for the last 10 years which is not filling in the holes in the cheese but instead basically lighting the cheese on fire right incendiary cheese right yet another story about what happened at 1500 pennsylvania avenue told in the most inflammatory way possible i've sat with media executives who brag about the fact that they create content for as little as possible and then write headlines that create the largest cortisol response so that you will click on them that's not a world we should be celebrating that's not a world that's making the world better if on the other hand we actually celebrated who is making the cheese bigger who's filling in that imagine in the future that you actually had ai companies that were measuring who actually advanced human knowledge mathematically over the course of the last year the most we gave them an award we could call it the big cheese award right i'm not kidding like how amazing would that be and you might be thinking okay matthew you're crazy like i'm the person who thinks ai is just destroying the world and technology always makes things worse and so let me share just two anecdotes that make me have some hope that this might actually be the case the first starts 23 years ago 23 years ago the music industry had a huge problem napster kazaa everyone was stealing music and then steve jobs stepped on stage almost 20 years ago to this day and he said we're going to do something different we're going to charge 99 cents per song we actually say that you should be paying for the music that you consume now that's not the business model that won but it was the start and it turned into to what is today Spotify and all the other systems that are out there, which is basically $10 a month, all-you-can-eat music. And it's pretty amazing. Last year, Spotify alone sent over $10 billion to music creators in revenue. And again, that's in addition to titles, TikToks, YouTube, all of Apple Music, everybody else. More money is going to music creation than any time in human history. So technology can be pie-expanding, and I think it's about it. In fact, I thought it was so important that I flew up to Stockholm to meet with Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, and he said, you know, it's pretty amazing. We know when someone goes to Spotify and they type in Taylor Swift, shake it off, that we can give them what they're looking for. But every once in a while, someone comes in and types in something like, I want a song about how much fun it is to dance disco with your cat. And nobody's written that. But they know that nobody's written that, and so they actually go back and they take those queries and they publish them back to music creators. And this is the moment you're all going to think you're doing life wrong, but there's a guy who lives in Denmark who makes 40 million euros a year writing songs for unfulfilled Spotify queries. And I think that's beautiful. That's filling the holes in the cheese, because when I look for a song, when I look for something, what I'm looking for is an emotion, and this person is helping me find a song to resonate that way. And I think that's a model for what could happen as well. Another story starts a little bit closer to home. So this, this is the Park Record newspaper. The first place I ever saw my name in print, my hometown newspaper from Park City, Utah. It was dying. So three years ago, my wife and I bought it. We did not buy it because we thought it was going to be a great business. We bought it because we thought local news was important. In fact, the only KPI, we had no financial KPIs, the only KPI we focused on was how much could we increase voter turnout and the answer was we got it from the low 20% to over 60% in the last election in three years, which is amazing, right? Local news matters. But here's the crazy part. Terrible business, right? Except it's not. We're likely going to make more in 2026 off licensing our content to AI companies than we do off digital advertising. Why? Because if you're traveling to Park City, Utah, and you want to know what's the great new restaurant, what's the cool band that's coming to town, we're the only one. We're the only ones that have it. So think about how amazing that would be. Think about how, if in the future, the business model of the new AI-driven internet actually rewards the media we're all craving. Local, unique, original content. That's what I'm super excited about. But there are problems. Challenges. It's kind of like any of the superhero films where the hero of the last movie becomes the villain of the next. And so our good friends at Google, they are holding this back. They believe that they have a God-given right to all of the content online. They shouldn't have to pay for any of it. And they have a huge advantage. In fact, it's hard to believe this, but every other AI company was actually started to oppose Google, right? That's what OpenAI started with. Anthropic was just a spin-off of OpenAI. XAI, all of this was all to say, we can't let Google win this entire game. How much of an advantage do they have? Well, we looked at this again, and we found that every single page that OpenAI, Google sees three, right? Four for Microsoft, in Microsoft's case. Five in Anthropic's case. 21 or 22 in XAI's case. An enormous advantage that Google has. And they want to hold on to that advantage. In fact, they're playing incredibly dirty. They're saying to people who are content creators, you can't stop us from training on your content or we will take you out of search. Horrible. Superman, how far you've fallen. And so I was pretty depressed, I have to confess, thinking we were on the cusp of creating something amazing, on the cusp of creating a better internet. And yet, I have to just realize that no AI company's top priority is paying content creators. What's their top priority? Beating Google. Which gave me an idea. Kind of a wonderful idea. An idea which is going on right now, and it's working. Which is, we're saying, don't charge for all the content that's out there. Just charge the AI companies the ability to catch Google. And I don't think that's the end game. But I think it might be the iTunes moment. It might be the point that shows us content is worth paying for. Everyone should be out there and we can create a better business model for the internet. And so I am hopeful that on this stage, not too long from now, I get to hand out one of the first Big Cheese Awards. And I really appreciate it. Thank you. That was Matthew Prince speaking at TED 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Balarezo, and the team at TED.com. Christopher Faisy-Bogan, Valentina Bohannini, Banban Chang, Brian Green, and Laini Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.