AI saved me from cookie banners, travel insurance popups, car rental quotes, & the special frustration of comparing flight options across tabs.

I downloaded an open-source agent, tweaked it & watched it find the cheapest flights for my trip from San Francisco to Newark.

One-Way Trip (12 Jan 2025)

Airline Departure Arrival Duration Stops Price
United Airlines 5:14 AM from SFO 3:44 PM at EWR 7 hr 30 min 1 (DEN) $297
United Airlines 10:45 AM from SFO 7:26 PM at EWR 5 hr 41 min Nonstop $474

Return Trip (18 Jan 2025)

Airline Departure Arrival Duration Stops Price
United Airlines 5:14 AM from SFO 3:44 PM at EWR 7 hr 30 min 1 (DEN) $297
United Airlines 6:38 AM from SFO 5:33 PM at EWR 7 hr 55 min 1 (DEN) $422

In the video, the robot “sees” the page, determines the next step, errs by clicking on an SEO optimized link, backtracks, & then ultimately extracts the answer from the chaff.

If I received a quick chat with this & a button that asked me which to book, I’m certain I’d never return to the travel agency’s website. And I’d ask it to do the same for me elsewhere.

  • Email: Please suggest replies.
  • News: Show me the top 10 news stories about the topics I care about.
  • Social Media: Suggest replies & summarize the trending & spicy.
  • Grocery Shopping: Same as last week.
  • Sports & Stock Updates: Niners & the Nasdaq.
  • Book Recommendations: Any new spy novels and notable macroeconomics books?

Here’s the twist. During the last 20 years, we’ve focused on improving websites for humans with complex design, single page apps, & complex Javascript. We’ve achieved the newspaper from Harry Potter.

But AI thrives on simplicity : pure text. Microsoft recently released a library to convert all kinds of documents to AI-friendly text : PDF, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, images & audio.

The better the AI performs, the fewer websites I’ll visit.

What if the future of the web is exactly how it started : pure text websites? But text for robots, not text for humans.