Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
agentic web
AI agents
normative infrastructure
online access
delegated authority
The Agentic Web Requires New Normative Infrastructure
🤖 AI Summary
Current legal frameworks, platform terms of service, and informal practices fail to adequately distinguish between malicious bots and user-authorized AI agents, thereby stifling the latter’s potential societal and consumer benefits. This work proposes, for the first time, a dedicated normative infrastructure for user-authorized AI agents. Through policy analysis, legal framework design, and the articulation of social norms, it advocates for an institutional and ethical system that balances users’ rights to agency with other legitimate interests. The study identifies core principles to guide the normative development of agent networks, offering both a theoretical foundation and actionable direction for future policymaking and platform governance.
📝 Abstract
The agentic web, in which users interact with the internet largely through agents acting on their behalf, is now technically feasible. However, many of the consumer and social benefits that could be realized by online AI agents acting scrupulously in their principals' interest are currently obstructed by outdated laws, terms of service, and other less formal practices which allow online platforms to block and degrade agent access, often in secret. No distinction is currently drawn between "malicious bots" and AI agents acting with the express delegated authority of a user. For the agentic web to realize its promise, it needs not only the technical infrastructure of protocols and interfaces, but the normative infrastructure of a broadly-accepted and socially-beneficial set of laws, norms and practices governing agentic access to online properties. Building that normative infrastructure requires a society-wide conversation. This paper aims to help precipitate that conversation, to identify normative principles that can guide it, and to advocate for policies that enable users' appropriately delegated agents to act online on their behalf, with as few curbs on their doing so as is reasonable given the other legitimate interests at stake.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
agentic web
normative infrastructure
AI agents
delegated authority
online access governance
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