In the logic of the machine learning gold rush, the next breakthrough offering in the industry will be "AI agents" personal assistants, basically, that can use apps and computers to do tasks on your behalf.If that actually happens a serious "if," but not a completely far-fetched possibility, as early efforts have already started to hit the market there a major side effect: it'll totally change the ecosystem of information online if it's mainly being consumed by neural nets instead of humans.AsBusiness Insider reports, financial analysts are warning that if the use of AI agents becomes widespread, there will be sweeping knock-on effects throughout the economy.Take Bernstein wealth management analysts Mark Shmulik and Nikhil Devnani,who wrote in a recent investor note flagged by BI thatthe effects on the economies of the internet will be seismic as apps and websites start to be designed with AI users in mind instead of human ones."If AI agents truly become useful, the internet will go dark," Devnavi and Shmulik wrote in their investor note, viewed by BI.Instead of switching between car-share services to find the lowest price, for example, your AI agent could simply find the cheapest ride for you, effectively taking the mental labor out of deciding what to do.That's a benign enough example, but others could be more confounding. If it becomes de rigueur to catch up on the news of the day by having your AI agent summarize the work of various publications, that means that no human is viewing their ads anymore so at that point, who's funding the reporting of tomorrow's news?It would also give extraordinary economic power to AI agents and their creators, because they'd be the new gatekeepers between consumers and a broad swath of products and services.Currently "aggregators have control over the supply," the Bernstein analysts wrote, "but if demand consolidates and gets fulfilled through an AI agent, you may never need to open your rideshare app again!"Combine that realignment with the other ways that AI is threatening to cut into jobs that have traditionally been done by humans, and you have the makings of a great economic upset.And of course, that's all assuming that AI becomes extremely clever in the future, while in reality the tech's accuracy and reasoning abilities have often lagged behind the hype. In Shmulik and Devnani's future, are the AI agents offering perfect advice to navigate a challenging world, or are they gullible dupes that make harebrained recommendations especially once AI agents start to penetrate high-stakes industries like health care and insurance?But for those looking to cash in on the AI hype train,that's nothing to worry about there's money to be made."Welcome to the Agentic AI era," Devnani and Shmulik wrote. "There's nowhere to hide."Share This Article