When AI will browse the web for me

It's a shame that the latest AI trend is figuring out how to replace our beloved internet. To state the obvious: the master plan is to make websites invisible to the public and let agents do "the web browsing" for us.

Every AI-focused product tries exactly this on a smaller scale for a while; "Hey you! Do you want to use our slurped-in and almost accurate content summary instead of reading something yourself? It's great (but, remember, use it at your own risk)!".

To scale up, browser makers now try to convince us to use LLMs and AI makers try to build and sell browsers. Web browsing isn't the goal, though, and the direction is pretty clear. AI companies need to reach more people and the old web we know is the obvious target.

Ibrahim struck a nerve in his recent post:

When Chrome browses for me, it will surface what it wants me to see, filtered through corporate priorities, advertising relationships, and engagement metrics. Over time, through a kind of digital Stockholm syndrome, I'll start believing these curated choices reflect my authentic preferences. I'll mistake algorithmic manipulation for personal agency.

Accessing a curated or filtered internet isn't a new problem, though. Search became the first gatekeeper decades ago. If a site isn't on Google Search it might not exist, right? But regardless of whether a site is visible on search or not, it can still be accessed, linked to and discovered. The open web is still out there!

To work around this filter problem, I avoid relying on search or algorithms to discover and consume content as much as possible. My RSS reader and email inbox are always full. Every day, I hear from fellow humans, trusted publications and my favorite bloggers. They'll reach me without a middleman and there's no algorithm or feed that can cut this connection.

But what will happen when LLMs manage all the internet content for us? What will happen when we won't be browsing the web but generated answers? Will all the manipulation we know from social media enter the general web; just on a bigger and much scarier scale?

If LLMs will become the new information gatekeeper, we won't be in charge of our consumed content anymore. If LLMs will curate and summarize the web for the general public, ignored sites might as well not exist and our internet reality might be controlled by software developed in silicon valley.

What could go wrong, right?