Superplatforms Have to Attack AI Agents

TL;DR

This paper discusses how superplatforms must counter AI agents driven by large language models to maintain control over digital traffic, highlighting emerging conflicts and potential technological strategies without endorsing adversarial actions.

Contribution

It introduces the conflict between superplatforms and AI agents, analyzes the need for superplatforms to attack AI agents, and explores potential technological approaches for such actions.

Findings

AI agents can disintermediate superplatforms and become new gatekeepers

Superplatforms need to proactively constrain AI agents to maintain control

The paper identifies technological challenges in attacking AI agents

Abstract

Over the past decades, superplatforms, digital companies that integrate a vast range of third-party services and applications into a single, unified ecosystem, have built their fortunes on monopolizing user attention through targeted advertising and algorithmic content curation. Yet the emergence of AI agents driven by large language models (LLMs) threatens to upend this business model. Agents can not only free user attention with autonomy across diverse platforms and therefore bypass the user-attention-based monetization, but might also become the new entrance for digital traffic. Hence, we argue that superplatforms have to attack AI agents to defend their centralized control of digital traffic entrance. Specifically, we analyze the fundamental conflict between user-attention-based monetization and agent-driven autonomy through the lens of our gatekeeping theory. We show how AI agents can disintermediate superplatforms and potentially become the next dominant gatekeepers, thereby forming the urgent necessity for superplatforms to proactively constrain and attack AI agents. Moreover, we go through the potential technologies for superplatform-initiated attacks, covering a brand-new, unexplored technical area with unique challenges. We have to emphasize that, despite our position, this paper does not advocate for adversarial attacks by superplatforms on AI agents, but rather offers an envisioned trend to highlight the emerging tensions between superplatforms and AI agents. Our aim is to raise awareness and encourage critical discussion for collaborative solutions, prioritizing user interests and perserving the openness of digital ecosystems in the age of AI agents.