The rise of Google AI Mode (plus agents) will be a big economic shift for the web—but it's also a huge psychological shift in our relationship to other people on the web. Right now, AI summaries of queries do not send our attention outward to links but rather answer our questions directly by summarizing the material they can consume faster than the user. This will change the economics of the internet because the machine has gone from hunting and gathering (ranking and displaying links to which they send traffic) to serving final meals (summarizing the results). We're seeing AI Mode affect Alphabet earnings, Reddit revenues, and search traffic for publishers. That's already a big story. But I'm also watching now information consumers are being moved up the hierarchy of search: - Bottom rung: Find links in response to search - Next rung up: Generic summary of links (AI) - Next: Encourage me to talk to the AI about the results rather than click any of the below links, so that the AI summary isn't generic but rather tailored to the user who did the search (personalized advanced AI) - Next: Anticipate the next search/prompt and give me the information or product I need before I know I need it (Muse, Instinct, advanced agents) With each rung, the human-to-human interaction of the web (eg, me reading an article by a person) is being intermediated and then finally replaced by a machine that anticipates what I wanted from that human-to-human interaction and serves it up to me, possibly even before I knew that I wanted it.

This morning, several normal people in my life reached out to me, worried about an impending apocalypse. The timing and speed at which this all started (just yesterday) feels suspect. It feels like a coordinated fear campaign, designed to flood the zone and spread panic.

TOMORROW.✨️ Our live DC salon with @WCrowdsLive is finally happening! We’re getting together for a thoughtful, open discussion about why some topics feel so difficult to talk about in public life right now, and how we can bring back genuine nuance and curiosity to our conversations. If you're in the area, we'd love for you to pull up a chair and share your thoughts alongside @ChristineEmba, @shadihamid, @TheAnnaGat, and @dmarusic. You can register here, come join us! interintellect.com/salons/th…