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After the Feed

Based on new research from the team at New_Public, After the Feed presents an outlook for how AI might reshape the information environment and opportunities to ensure the future of our information systems supports healthy communities. The main thesis of this research is that the social feed era (technology dominated by algorithms incentivizing time-on-platform) is over, and the agentic interface era (a tech interface built for an individual) has begun. This raises the question: – how do we maintain human connections, build relationships and continue to have shared experiences in a technological era of extreme personalization?

There are five trends advancing the agentic interface era, and the research provides digestible insights on how these trends are moving beyond the platform experience many of us are familiar with today. The five trends are:

  1. Agentic interfaces are the new new gatekeepers
    In the platform era, algorithms based on a composite of people like the end user, optimized the user experience for human attention.Humans were still authoring most of the content online, with AI in the background. In the agentic interface era, the system is optimized for agent attention and information is passing from end user to agent at a superhuman pace, with little intervention from other humans. The agents will know a wide range of intimate details, which requires a deep trust in the systems providing the agent services.
  2. AI is destabilizing the big social platforms
    Generative AI is eroding many of the central tenets the big tech platforms relied on to grow. They are now less safe, less social and inundated with AI slop and bots. The popular platforms that used to be central to digital life are now degrading, and AI is offering easy pathways to other options.
  3. The emerging trust economy
    If the platform era was dominated by the attention economy, this new era is driven by the trust economy. Because AI is used at all points of content generation and dissemination, verification is increasingly difficult. Data shows audiences are already prioritizing trust and credibility in their content, and a good reputation is the new online social currency. Here there is a challenge for designers of these AI tools to provide legible indicators of trust in the interfaces.
  4. Entering a world of software abundance
    Generative AI is lowering the cost and the expertise barrier for creating new digital tools and software. This is already a lucrative model for AI companies, and the market reinforces the researcher’s belief that people are eager to build and own their own software. There is huge potential to build bespoke, personal digital spaces in a democratic and accessible way to support human connection in the agentic interface era.
  5. In an agentic world, human connection survives
    Using the Jobs to be Done framework, the researchers outline which human functions are most vulnerable and which are most resilient in the agentic interface era. The roles least likely to be supplanted by AI are those grounded in connecting & belonging and expressing & creating, which signals that human connection can and will survive this new tech era.

In response to these trends, New_Public surfaces three areas of opportunity where actors are already shaping the next internet era with a goal of supporting healthy social connection. These opportunities stem from the confluence of the positive trends of the agentic interface era: that connection will survive, trust is scarce and building is cheaper than ever. The three opportunities are:

  1. High-trust micro communities
    New digital tools and social platforms are now easily and freely created using AI agents. Hyper specific and/or local groups can design bespoke services that meet their needs and social principles like never before. If collaboratively and democratically designed, these new spaces can serve a community rather than extracts from it.
  2. AI-supported stewardship
    AI can play a critical role in lessening the administrative burdens of content moderation by automating low-level stewardship tasks that free up human moderators for the spaces that require human judgement, nuance and care. Here there is possibility to support unpaid community networks and reduce burnout amongst community network stewards and moderators.
  3. The hybrid public space
    This opportunity is the least developed but most urgent. This new technological era is being built now, and there is an immediate need for builders, researchers and designers to help define and preserve what the new hybrid public square and community spaces can and will look like.

Use This Resource To:

  1. Understand how AI is shaping the new evolution of digital space, online platforms and community engagement.
  2. Get a clear picture of what jobs, community roles and social norms are most at risk in the agentic interface era, and which are most resilient to better identify opportunities for philanthropic support.
  3. Begin to develop advocacy and casemaking materials for supporting the research, ideation, innovation and experimentation that will be needed to ensure that human connection perseveres in the new hybrid public space.

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Source: New_Public

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