Descrizione
Rethinking AI and Data: Incentives, Trust, and Decentralized Web Standards
In this Ship Happens episode, host Per Krogslund interviews Ruben Verborgh, a computer science professor at Ghent University and consultant about building a more responsible digital ecosystem where incentives align with ethics rather than exploitation.
Ruben argues that today’s AI ecosystem is fundamentally unstable: companies often lack control over the models they deploy, sustainable business models remain unclear, and the industry continues relying on advertising-driven incentives that reward data extraction over trust. Instead of focusing purely on “ethical AI” messaging, Ruben says the real challenge is designing better economic systems and incentives.
The conversation explores an alternative future for AI and personal data—one where raw user data stays under individual control and algorithms move to the data instead of endlessly collecting and centralizing it. Ruben explains how decentralized web standards like Solid aim to separate identity and storage from applications, giving users more portability, ownership, and freedom online.
Per and Ruben also discuss mistrust in AI agents, why smaller task-specific models may ultimately be safer and more controllable than giant general-purpose systems, and why society must work alongside younger generations to shape technology rather than attempting to ban it outright.
About the Guest
Ruben Verborgh is a computer science professor at Ghent University and a researcher focused on decentralized web technologies, linked data, and data ownership. He works with Tim Berners-Lee’s Inrupt on the Solid project, which aims to separate applications from personal data storage to give users greater control, privacy, and interoperability across the web.
Chapters:
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
00:32 Mission for Better Data
01:24 Incentives and AI Ethics
02:54 Packaging AI Like Utilities
05:14 Economic Model Will Implode
07:10 Beyond Ads and Big Data
08:36 Bringing the Algorithm to the Data
10:36 Consent Beats Tracking
11:45 The Myth of Retargeting Value
15:10 Trust and AI Agents
16:55 Guarantees and Smaller AI Models
18:03 Solid and the Decentralized Web
20:51 Why Identity Came Later
23:04 The Web as an Amplifier
26:22 Fix Incentives, Not Algorithms
27:53 There Is No “Responsible Tech,” Only Systems
29:06 Policy Shifts Beyond Finger Wagging
32:04 Believing in the Next Generation
33:11 Wrap Up and Outro
Resources & Links
● Inrupt Official Website: https://www.inrupt.com/
● Solid Project: https://solidproject.org/
● Ghent University: https://www.ugent.be/
● Ruben Verborgh Website: https://ruben.verborgh.org/
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