After the Internet, here comes the artificial intelligence economy

Since the arrival of the Web, digital technologies have mainly been developed to give people access to information. Websites were designed to be read; search engines were created to help users find content, and digital platforms brought creators closer to their audiences.

For more than thirty years, the digital economy rested essentially on a relationship between content producers and human consumers. Today, a new category of user is emerging: artificial intelligence systems that read, analyze, summarize, learn, produce and create – all while consuming unprecedented quantities of information.

This shift is profoundly transforming the very notion of intellectual property.

Should creators lose control over their works?

In recent years, many authors, artists, media outlets, researchers and companies have been asking questions.

• How can artificial intelligence be allowed to use content while respecting the rights of its creators?
• How can the economic value of creative work be preserved?
• How can fair compensation be ensured?
• How can trust be maintained between knowledge producers and artificial intelligence developers?

Initiatives such as SPUR (Standards for Publisher Usage Rights) represent an important step forward in this thinking. They seek to establish standardized mechanisms for expressing content usage rights, improving transparency of use and facilitating collaboration between intellectual property holders and artificial intelligence platforms.

This is an essential effort, but probably only the first step.

From the content economy to the digital rights economy.

Every creation, document, image, video, 3D model, drawing, corporate procedure, patent, scientific dataset and cinematographic work will progressively have to carry with it its own digital identity, its usage rights, its history, its traceability and its terms of exploitation. Digital assets will themselves have to become intelligent.

A new generation of infrastructure is becoming necessary

For a long time, cybersecurity consisted mainly of preventing data theft. Beyond traditional licenses and the need for new trust infrastructure, it will also be necessary to be able to demonstrate:

• Who owns a piece of content and who can use it?
• In what context and under what conditions?
• For how long and with what compensation?
• How can its use be audited, and how can we guarantee that an artificial intelligence respects the rights granted to it?

From cybersecurity to digital trust

Data protection will no longer be the only issue. We will have to put in place the means to ensure the protection of rights, identities, knowledge and digital assets. It is this vision that guides the development of Quantum Beyond's various technologies:

• Q-Carbon Security Systems protects communications and critical infrastructure.
• The QKS structures and governs knowledge so that it can be used reliably by humans and artificial intelligence alike.
• Our work on sovereign digital identity and Zero-Knowledge architectures aims to strengthen trust in digital exchanges.
• And our ICEqb platform aims to transform the global management of cinematographic works by allowing intellectual property holders to retain control over their distribution, their rights and their revenues throughout the life cycle of their creations.

In our view, these initiatives all pursue the same objective: ensuring that technology does more to protect the interests of those who create value.

Learning to respect as much as learning itself

Artificial intelligence represents a tremendous opportunity to accelerate innovation. But that innovation must rest on a lasting relationship between creators, organizations and technologies. The future cannot rest solely on a choice between protection and innovation. It must rest on the balance between them.

Creators must be able to keep creating. Companies must be able to keep investing. Artificial intelligence must be able to learn. And everyone's rights must be respected in a transparent, verifiable and secure way.

The governance of digital assets

The twentieth century built the infrastructure for transporting people and goods. The twenty-first century built the infrastructure for transporting information. The next challenge will be to build the infrastructure for governing knowledge, identities and digital rights.

We have built infrastructure to store and transport information. It is time to devote our energy to building infrastructure capable of governing the value of that information.

For we believe that digital trust will become one of the foundations of this new economy – an economy where people, organizations and artificial intelligence can collaborate in an environment where knowledge circulates freely, but where rights, identities, intellectual property and digital sovereignty remain protected.

In addition to humans, content will be created, read, understood, used and enriched by millions, even billions of devices and, of course, by artificial intelligence.