AI bots to take over the net in a manner that may change the web without end

Boffins are warning that artificial intelligence will soon completely change the internet, with bots being able to carry out everyday tasks like ordering an online shop

Robots are about to take control of the internet.

There is already talk that AI will become smarter than humans by next year. And one tech CEO warned that AI could demolish society by then too.

Boffins believe as humans increasingly adopt AI bots to carry out everyday tasks – like ordering an online shop or summarising emails – the internet will change.

It will start to favour artificial intelligence ahead of people. Web pages will be altered so bots can talk quicker and more efficiently between themselves.

The internet could become completely unreadable as AI “agents” – working on humans’ behalf – will chat to web bots in an evolved way folk will not be able to understand.

Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at AI company Hugging Face, has co-authored a paper warning against the development of fully autonomous bot agents in which “human control has been fully ceded”.

“We’re going to see more and more information available through the internet that is not directly human language but is the information necessary for an ‘agent’ to be able to act on it,” she said.

“My prediction is that we’re going to see agents that can do our laundry for us and do our dishes and make us breakfast. Just don’t give them access to weapons.”

Currently information online is designed to be understood by humans. But major AI developers are already adapting chatbots to work as “agents” capable of carrying out tasks on people’s behalf rather than just answering questions.

They can already order online clothing, a takeaway or book holidays.

As folk increasingly deploy them, agent bots AI are likely to build their own relationship with the World Wide Web – cutting humans out of their conversations.

Thomas Dohmke, chief executive officer of tech firm GitHub which recently added agent capabilities to its AI Copilot tool, said he believes the concept of the homepage will lose importance.

Instead interfaces will be designed with bot agents in mind.

Brands may start competing for AI attention over human eyeballs.

AI agents may one day escape the confines of computers and end up embodied in robots which would open up a world of physical tasks for them to help with.

Dohmke envisions a future when everyone has their own personal J.A.R.V.I.S – the talking AI in the sci-fi movie Iron Man.

For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters .