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4 quotes from 1 episode on 20VC with Harry Stebbings, each with a timestamped link to the source.
Parag Agrawal argues that ads in their current form break once agents do the reading. An agent visits an ad-supported page, no one sees the ads, and the publisher makes no money.
The safety risk Parag Agrawal worries about more: people who want to do bad things, because model alignment isn't adversary proof.
“Some people actually want to do bad things and the models alignment is not adversary proof and I think those are the things we must worry about more…”
An ad-supported page earns money when people see the ads. Parag Agrawal points out that when agents show up instead, no one sees the ads and the publisher makes no money.
“If you think of you're in the content business, let's say you have a page which is ad supported. It's public information on the web. Ad supported page. People show up, you show them ads, you make money, great content. Agents show up, no one sees ads, you make no money.”
“Ads don't work with agents in their current form…”
Parag Agrawal describes the web event stream as the web going from pull to push. More persistent agents mean more reason to move queries into push.
“The web event stream is the web going from pull to push and I'm super excited about that because as you have more and more persistent agents you're going to see incentives to move people to move queries into push on search rather than pull on search.”
From Why AI Agents Will Kill Pull Search and Shift the Web to Push
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