Making the internet better for AI agents might make it worse for everyone else

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here . Until recently, you could divide internet users into just two categories: bots and people. Websites have long allowed bots to perform automated tasks, like capturing the content of web pages, but rules govern what they can access and how they behave. The web, after all, is designed primarily for people, even if we occasionally have to solve puzzles and captchas to prove we are not bots. But this is being entirely upended by the release of personal AI agents, which can do things for you online, like booking flights or hotel rooms. They have recently been unleashed at scale by the launch of apps like OpenAI’s Dots and Meta’s Muse. Muse was downloaded 5 million times in its first month, and agentic web traffic tripled from August to September. The mingling of these agents with human visitors—on an internet designed largely to prioritize people—has gone poorly, with many websites blocking AI agents that consumers have sent to negotiate prices or plan vacations. Still, if the demand for agents keeps going up, the internet will be increasingly redesigned for them instead of us. Such changes are coming because agents really do mark a third category of web visitor. They’re not humans, of course, and they use the internet at machine speed. But they’re not quite bots, either, because they’re acting on behalf of individual people to do tasks that can be perfectly legitimate and useful. They just work faster than a person would. Since agents don’t f

Redesigning the internet for AI agents may prioritize machines over humans.

The shift to accommodating AI agents on the internet disrupts its design for human users, causing conflicts like website blocks and legal battles. This could degrade user experience and complicate commerce, though the full societal impact remains uncertain.

The piece describes a structural tension between AI agents and the human-designed web, with blocking, legal battles, and business model disruption as early signs. This is a real but moderate concern about internet usability and control, not catastrophic, grounded in reported adoption and conflict data.

The article describes the proliferation of personal AI agents on the internet and the resulting friction with websites designed for humans. It highlights current issues like agents being blocked and the potential for the internet to be redesigned for agents rather than people. This shift could negatively impact human experience and business models.

The article describes a scenario where AI agents are causing significant disruption on the internet. Many websites are blocking AI agents, leading to a potential redesign of the internet to prioritize AI agents over human users. This could make the internet worse for everyone else.

SOURCE     MIT Technology Review: AI (tier 1)
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DOCUMENT   39ea155a-2a9d-4b31-a5d4-af8b3e7e7c6b
           https://technologyreview.com/2026/10/19/1147186/making-the-internet-better-for-ai-agents-might-make-it-worse-for-everyone-else
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EVIDENCE   2 extracted excerpts
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MODEL RUN  5 runs, methodology 1.0.1
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SCORE      -53  (Adverse)
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CONFIDENCE 77%