► Full reference: M.-A. Frison-Roche, “La supériorité du système de l’Internet sur le système algorithmique, car le premier est ouvert et le second ne l’est pas” (The superiority of the Internet system over the algorithmic system, because the first is open and the second is not), LinkedIn post, 23 January 2026.
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🌐 read the original post on LinkedIn (in French), commenting on the World Economic Forum debate “Internet up for Grabs” (Davos, 23 January 2026)
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The debate held in Davos on 23 January 2026 concerns the articulation between the Internet system and the algorithmic system (known as artificial intelligence).
It features the usual anthropomorphisms, which should nevertheless be avoided, such as the idea that the challenge would be to “educate” software… and there is agreement on the contribution of these algorithmic tools, some arguing that, because they “learn”, “speak” and “converse”, they might well constitute a space that could replace the space constituted by the Internet.
But without returning to the fact that the space of the Internet is occupied by persons and that software programs are not persons, the technical infrastructure of the Internet, through which the digital space has been built, is open, which allows every person to access it and to express themselves in it.
This is not true of the algorithmic space, which is a set of closed places: open at first if the owner so wishes, free at first if the owner so wishes, then closed to whomever the owner wishes if the owner so wishes, or subject to payment if the owner so wishes (this is the legal question raised by the lawsuit between the investor Elon Musk and OpenAI), whereas the Internet is structurally open.
Its very principle is access.
If the digital space were “rewritten” by the algorithmic system, presenting software as if it were human beings (agentic systems), then human beings, that is to say real humans, would no longer have free access to the space of free communication.
Algorithms, which are not educated, are only tools, and their status must remain so.