AX, Creativity and the Human Web
Perfecting the AX of the web can help reignite the web’s creative potential and reclaim mindshare from closed platforms.
The concept of ax, agent experience, has sparked a range of reactions across the industry. Many builders who are tackling similar questions as Netlify in spaces like authentication, collaboration or developer tooling are starting to embrace AX as a discipline.
Others see AI and AX as a path leading to a non-human web, where machine intelligence replaces human creativity. This perspective is most eloquently expressed in Bryan Robinson’s post, “Does our technology still work for us?”
It’s worth asking, does focusing on AX mean giving up on humans? Will it lead to a web for agents by agents? Will it, as Robinson suggests, put us at “risk of losing the skills that make culture, the skills that benefit us all, the skills at creation?”
The french philosopher Paul Virilio famously said, “The invention of the ship was also the invention of the shipwreck.” Every new technology inherently brings with it the possibility of new kinds of failures or accidents. AI is no exception.
But without ships, we don’t explore new worlds, expand economies, or connect civilizations.
AI has transformed computers from deterministic machines into agents in the world, acting and operating and initiating the execution of transactions themselves. As agents, computers are now starting to perceive their environment and take actions autonomously in order to achieve goals. They can produce text, images, video, 3D objects and code, and interact with our software and operate in our world.
As with all new technologies, AI will inevitably produce it’s own new failure modes, pitfalls and potentially even catastrophes. For example, the open web is currently under threat. Pulling human interactions out of the web, into walled gardens like ChatGPT, messenger, X or similar vendor-owned platforms, is a real risk posed to the open web by AI and agents. We also must acknowledge the potential of a world where all of our content and creations are completely disintermediated by agents. What about a world where agents are driving their own economy 2.0 at a speed and pace that’s no longer even accessible to humans? These scenarios are not impossible to imagine based on the technological capabilities AI has started to unlock.
The worst outcomes are not preordained or predetermined. If we want to prevent them we can’t stand idly by and watch. We must use this new technology to empower human creativity and make agents work for us. We must build the world we want to see.
Agents and Human Creativity
As a web platform builder, I believe agents can help make web development more approachable and be the path to the next 100 million web developers. Agents have enormous potential to allow for far more creativity on the web. They can lower the barrier to entry to building on the web. Most importantly, they’ll raise the ceiling for the experiences that can live on the web. Here are some mind-blowing early examples:
Sean Roberts leads Netlify’s AX Strategy. One evening not long ago, Sean sat down with his eight-year old son, who built this adorable little 2D platform game on the web with bolt.new: olivers-adventure.netlify.app
What better example of lowering barriers? Millions of kids are now using AI-powered software like Replit to build apps and sites, while new developers are launching their first software projects on the web with Lovable. It’s truly inspiring and the beginning of something great. More access. More creativity. More opportunities to build and share.
Beyond just access, a true new creative process is taking shapeas people develop new skills and start to master these emerging stacks and toolsets.
Ian Curtis, a UX Designer at Niantic, built an advanced AI powered browser-based 3D scene editor entirely by prompting bolt.new in natural language. Following his project on Twitter and playing with the final result has been mind blowing. It’s an incredible example of what someone can achieve when developing a real skillset around these tools and applying human creativity and innovation: thebrowserlab.com
Outside the realm of the web, writer and illustrator, Zack London, has been crafting a full sci-fi epos of ancient species conquering space with the use of AI to generate video: @gossip.goblin
The democratization of VFXs and video production lets creators like London create truly strange and weird tales that would never have been made if they required a huge budget or an army of artists. AI technology has allowed him to unlock new levels of innovation and creativity. I can only imagine what creators like him will do next as tools continue to get better and the outputs more impressive.
Building the Web we Want
When a single UX designer can build experiences at this level or an illustrator can craft a video epos, the ceiling for what’s possible to expect on the web will rise. And it opens the door to invent the next level and generations of web experiences, redefining interactions and shaping new UI paradigms for the shared digital experiences the web can deliver.
The web shouldn’t be reduced to a disintermediated bland product catalogue. It should be a vibrant space for human creativity. While closed platforms, walled gardens, and AI aggregators threaten to pull us away from that vision, the right agent experience (AX) can do the opposite. By making building for the web truly great, we have a chance to reignite the web’s creative potential and reclaim mindshare from walled in social networks and closed platforms.
The web has always been friendly to the concept of agents. There’s a reason every web request includes a “User-Agent” header. It was designed to be consumed, crawled and shared in many ways, serving diverse users and systems from browsers to screen readers to bots and automated processes. Perfecting the AX of the web can make it even better at serving all of these needs and interactions. The web can evolve without losing out on being the best place for real human shared experiences in our digital, connected world.
We have the ability to affect change now, before we end up in a bad place. The future is ours to build, one that empowers human creativity and ensures agents work for us. But we won’t get there by standing on the sideline and letting AI happen to us.
Join the efforts to build the best AX for the open web at agentexperience.ax