The tragedy of all human freedom is that inevitably humans will use that freedom to cause harm.

The web was given away for free and made public, but that only means that people get to decide whether they use it for good or ill purposes. To be honest, I don't get why he is lamenting this.

>You should own it. You should be empowered by it.

Why? Nothing in the design of web implies this. This is just a a value judgement (I don't disagree with), not something inherent to the technology. In fact the technology makes it a difficult problem to solve.

>That’s why we need a Cern-like not-for-profit body driving forward international AI research.

Which is the real point of the article. But that ship has already sailed. The US or China will never sell out it's corporations. And the EU and their member states is non-entity in the AI race.

Additionally it doesn't resolve the contradiction above. Freedom means the ability to use something for ill.