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EP 004
37 Min
Clicks and endless feeds are giving way to AI agents that book, buy, and decide online for you. Tune in to see how “Agentic Web” could turn browsers into personal concierges—and what that means for your time, wallet, and privacy.
Imagine sending one text—“Plan me a three-day Paris escape under $800, handle flights, hotel, dinner.” Minutes later, an itinerary appears, reservations made, loyalty points applied, and all you did was tap “approve.” Welcome to the Agentic Web—the next leap after search engines and social feeds.
In the 1990s, we clicked through static pages and typed keywords. The late-2000s mobile boom swapped links for endless recommendation feeds, turning scroll time into the “attention economy.” Now, powered by large language models, a third era is taking shape: autonomous AI agents that act online the way personal assistants do in real life. They carry out chains of tasks—researching, negotiating, purchasing—by talking directly to websites, apps, and even other agents, 24/7.
Three shifts make this possible:
Smarter brains – Agents now understand context, plan several steps ahead, and learn on the fly, so they can juggle complex goals like “monitor airfare until prices drop, then rebook automatically.”
A talking internet – New communication standards let sites describe their services in agent-friendly language, so bots can discover APIs, share data, and handle payments without captcha mazes.
An agent economy – Businesses will soon compete not for human clicks but for agent calls. The fastest, safest, best-priced service wins your agent’s attention—and therefore your business.
Benefits are easy to picture: automated billing disputes, research summaries ready each morning, supply chains that reroute themselves. But autonomy brings new headaches. Rogue agents could drain bank accounts or flood markets with misinformation. Experts are already working on “agentic guardrails,” zero-trust security, and red-team bots that stress-test the system before bad actors do.
Whether you’re a tech leader, a small-business owner, or simply tired of tab overload, this episode paints a clear, jargon-free picture of how the web is being rewired—and what it means for your time, your wallet, and your data.
Based on “Agentic Web: Weaving the Next Web with AI Agents” by Yingxuan Yang et al., 2025.
