I'm worried about the web
I'm worried about the web.
I don't want to live in a world where most users of internet-connected devices consume their information and accomplish their tasks via a chatbot interface.
I don't want these interactions to be filtered, watered-down, reformatted, and ultimately decided by a few.
I want the web that I grew up with to remain: direct linking, independent publishing, view-source culture, and the ability to publish and browse without permission from an authority. I want its openness, its diversity, its weirdness. All of it.
A chatbot-mediated web comes with risks: less creativity, less uniqueness, less discovery. It's a web that makes it harder to attribute content to its original creators, and not as rewarding for those who contribute original work.
I'm not yet worried about the web platform, though perhaps I will be soon.
HTML, CSS, JS, and related standards constitute the best platform there is to build on. Whether the web as we know it continues to exist doesn't diminish these technologies' merit.
But, over time, what's the incentive for browser vendors to keep improving the platform when AI agents increasingly write much of the code?
AI agents are perfectly happy writing code whatever the platform provides, which reduces the need for human web developers to ask for improvements.
Also, what's the incentive for vendors to improve the platform when end users consume it via a chatbot? Does a chatbot-mediated web require capabilities we don't yet have? I hope so, for the sake of the platform. But, for now at least, I don't think it does.
Are you worried too?