We help decision makers build a trustworthy future internet
As AI reshapes how value is created, captured and distributed online, the foundations of the internet are evolving. In response, the Initiative connects a globally representative, multisector community to strengthen understanding of the internet’s changing economic and social framework and support cooperation on innovation, governance and investment priorities.
Through shared principles and collaboration, the Initiative helps expand access and opportunity, strengthen public-private cooperation, and support the responsible integration of technologies such as artificial intelligence and extended reality.
Our focus areas
The Initiative examines how three dynamic shifts are reshaping the internet.
More data, deeper insights
Expanding data flows, including new data types such as body-based, ambient and AI-inferred data, are creating deeper insight into behaviour, systems and emerging trends, while opening new possibilities for innovation and value creation.
Growing focus on trust and governance
Users and societies demand more control over personal data while governance and regulatory frameworks remain in flux. Trust is the binding constraint on adoption in this transitionary era, so earning trust is necessary to achieving scale.
AI as the new intermediary
AI is reshaping how users discover, consume, and transact on the web, breaking the attention economy's core logic and creating new gatekeepers.
Our impact
This novel approach to development needs for the digital world combines global, cross-industry representation with a cutting-edge focus on emerging technologies, public-private partnership, and global scale.
The Initiative fosters peer-to-peer learning at an immediate, cross-sectoral level, and assembles a diversity of voices influencing the development of design, delivery, and governance of the agentic and embodied web.
Connected Future Initiative
A World Economic Forum Initiative