> AI tooling can finally realize this for the Web
There was a concept named Web 3.0 a while ago, aka the 'Semantic Web'. It wasn't the crypto/blockchain scam that we call Web3 today. The idea was to create a web of machine readable data based on shared ontologies. That would have effectively turned the web into a giant database of sorts, that the 'agents' could browse autonomously and derive conclusions from. This is sort of like how we browse the web to do research on any topic.
Since the data was already in a structured form in Web 3.0 instead of natural language, the agent would have been nowhere near the energy hogs that LLMs are today. Even the final conversion of conclusions into natural language would have been much more energy-efficient than the LLMs, since the conclusions were also structured. Combine that with the sorts of technology we have today, even a mediocre AI (by today's standards) would have performed splendidly.
Opponents called it impractical. But there already were smaller systems around from various scientific fields, operating on the same principle. And the proponents had already made a lot of headway. It was going to revolutionize information sharing. But what I think ultimately doomed it is the same reason you mentioned. The powers that be, didn't want smarter people. They wanted people who earned them money. That means those who spend their attention on dead scrolling feeds, trash ads and slop.
> but it's a shame that so many companies who built their empires on the shoulders of those visionaries think the only valid way to browse is with a human-eyeball-to-server chain of trust.
Yes, this! But only when your eyeball and attention earns them profit. Otherwise they are perfectly content with operating behind your backs and locking you out of decisions about how you want to operate the devices you paid for in full. This is why we can't have good things. No matter which way you look, the ruins of all the dreams lead to the same culprit - the insatiable greed of a minority. That makes me question exactly how much wealth one needs to live comfortably or even lavishly till their death.