About six weeks in the past, I despatched an e-mail to Satya Nadella complaining in regards to the monolithic winner-takes-all structure that Silicon Valley appears to check for AI, contrasting it with “the structure of participation” that had pushed earlier expertise revolutions, most notably the web and open supply software program. I suspected that Satya could be sympathetic due to previous conversations we’d had when his ebook Hit Refresh was printed in 2017.
I made the case that we’d like an structure for the AI business that allows cooperating AIs, that isn’t a winner-takes-all market, and that doesn’t make present corporations in each business merely the colonial domains of extractive AI conquerors, which appears to be the Silicon Valley imaginative and prescient.
Little did I do know that Microsoft already had one thing within the works that may be a demonstration of what I hope for. It’s referred to as NLWeb (Pure Language Internet), and it’s being introduced at this time. Satya supplied O’Reilly the prospect to be a part of the rollout, and we jumped at it.
Embracing the Early Stage of Innovation
My concepts are rooted in a notion about how expertise markets evolve. We’ve lived via three eras in computing. Every started with distributed innovation, went via a interval of fierce competitors, and ended with monopolistic gatekeepers. Within the first age (mainframes), it was IBM, within the second (PCs) Microsoft, and within the third (web and cell) the oligopoly of Google, Amazon, Meta, and Apple.
The error that everybody makes is a rush to crown the brand new monopolist at first of what’s primarily a wide-open area initially of a brand new disruptive market. And so they envision that monopoly largely as a alternative for what went earlier than, slightly than realizing that the paradigm has modified. When the private pc challenged IBM’s hardware-based monopoly, corporations raced to turn into the dominant private pc {hardware} firm. Microsoft gained as a result of it realized that software program, not {hardware}, was the brand new supply of aggressive benefit.
The story repeated itself initially of the web period. Marc Andreessen’s Netscape sought to exchange Microsoft as a dominant software program platform, apart from the web slightly than the PC. AOL realized that content material and neighborhood, not software program, was going to be a supply of aggressive benefit on the web, however they made the identical mistake of assuming the top sport of consolidated monopoly slightly than embracing the early stage of distributed innovation.
So right here we’re initially of the fourth age, the age of AI, and as soon as once more, everyone seems to be dashing to crown the brand new king. A lot of the chatter is whether or not OpenAI or one among its rivals would be the subsequent Google, when it seems to me that they’re extra doubtless the following Netscape or the following AOL. DeepSeek has thrown a bomb into the coronation parade, however we haven’t but totally realized the depth of the reset, or conceptualized what comes subsequent. That’s usually found out via a interval of distributed innovation.
We Want an Structure of Participation for AI
The time period “the structure of participation” initially got here to me as a proof of why Unix had succeeded as a collaborative challenge regardless of its proprietary license whereas different initiatives failed regardless of having open supply licenses. Unix was designed as a small working system kernel supporting layers of utilities and functions that would come from anybody, so long as they adopted the identical guidelines. Advanced behaviors could possibly be assembled by passing info between small packages utilizing commonplace knowledge codecs. It was a protocol-centric view of how advanced software program methods ought to be constructed, and the way they may evolve collaboratively. Linux, in fact, started as a re-implementation of Unix, and it was the structure of participation that it inherited, as a lot because the license and the neighborhood, that was the inspiration of its success. The web was additionally developed as a distributed, protocol-based system.
That idea ran via my net advocacy within the early ’90s, open supply advocacy within the late ’90s, and Internet 2.0 within the aughts. Participatory markets are modern markets; prematurely consolidated markets, not a lot. The obstacles to entry within the early PC market had been very low, entrepreneurship excessive. Ditto for the Internet, ditto for open supply software program and for Internet 2.0. For late Silicon Valley, fixated on untimely monopolization by way of “blitzscaling” (assume Uber, Lyft, and WeWork as examples, and now OpenAI and Anthropic), not a lot. It’s turn into a form of central planning. A small cadre of deep-pocketed traders decide the winners early on and attempt to drown out competitors with huge quantities of capital slightly than permitting the experimentation and competitors that enables for the invention of true product-market match.
And I don’t assume we’ve got that product-market match for AI but. Product-market match isn’t simply getting plenty of customers. It’s additionally discovering enterprise fashions that pay the prices of these companies, and that create worth for greater than the centralized platform. The issue with untimely consolidation is that it narrows the main target to the enterprise mannequin of the platform, usually on the expense of its ecosystem of builders.
As Invoice Gates famously instructed Chamath Palihapitiya when he was operating the nascent (and finally failed) Fb developer platform, “This isn’t a platform. A platform is when the financial worth of all people that makes use of it exceeds the worth of the corporate that creates it. Then it’s a platform.” To be clear, that’s not simply worth to finish customers. It’s worth to builders and entrepreneurs. And which means the chance to revenue from their improvements, to not have that worth instantly harvested by a dominant gatekeeper.
Now in fact, Sam Altman talks about creating worth for builders. In a current look at Sequoia Capital’s AI Ascent occasion, he stated his hope is to create “like simply an unbelievable quantity of wealth creation on the earth and different individuals to construct on that.” However he makes use of the language of “an working system” that others construct on prime of (and pay OpenAI for using) slightly than a shared infrastructure co-created by an ecosystem of builders.
That’s why I’ve been rooting for one thing totally different. A world the place specialised content material suppliers can construct AI interfaces to their very own content material slightly than having it sucked up by AI mannequin builders who supply up companies based mostly on it to their very own customers. A world the place software builders can supply new sorts of companies that allow others in a cooperative cascade.
We’re Simply Getting Began
Anthropic’s Mannequin Context Protocol, an open commonplace for connecting AI brokers and assistants to knowledge sources, is step one towards a protocol-centric imaginative and prescient of cooperating AIs. It has generated numerous well-deserved enthusiasm. Google’s A2A takes that additional with a imaginative and prescient of how AI brokers would possibly cooperate. NLWeb provides to that a straightforward method for web content material websites to affix the social gathering, providing each a conversational entrance finish to their content material and an MCP server in order that it’s accessible to brokers.
That is all going to take years to get proper. However as a result of it’s a protocol-centric slightly than a platform-centric imaginative and prescient, options can come from in every single place, not simply from a dominant monopolist.
Each new wave of computing has additionally had a brand new person interface paradigm. Within the mainframe period, it was the teletype terminal; for the PC, the Graphical Person Interface; for the web, the net’s document-centric interface; for cell, contact screens. For AI (for now no less than), it seems to be conversational interfaces.
Firms akin to Salesforce and Bret Taylor’s Sierra are betting on conversational brokers which are entrance ends to corporations, their companies, and their enterprise processes, in the identical method that their web site or cell app is at this time. Others are betting on client-side brokers that may entry distant websites, however usually by calling APIs and even performing the equal of display scraping. MCP, A2A, and different agent protocols level to a richer interplay layer made up of cooperating AIs, in a position to connect with any website providing AI companies, not simply by way of API calls to a dominant AI platform.
All corporations want no less than a begin on an AI frontend at this time. There’s a superb line from C. S. Lewis’s novel Until We Have Faces: “We can not see the gods nose to nose till we’ve got faces.” Proper now, some corporations are capable of supply an AI face to their customers, however most don’t. NLWeb is an opportunity for each firm to have an AI interface (or just “face”) for not simply their human customers however any bot that chooses to go to.
NLWeb is totally appropriate with MCP and gives present web sites a easy mechanism so as to add AI search and different companies to an present net frontend. We put collectively our demo AI search frontend for O’Reilly in just a few days. We’ll be rolling it out to the general public quickly.
