Enabling Agents and Battling Bots on an AI-Centric Web

a16z Podcast

a16z

Science, Innovation, Business, Entrepreneurship, Culture, Disruption, Software Eating The World, Technology

4.4 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Taken from the AI + a16z podcast, Arcjet CEO David Mytton sits down with a16z partner Joel de la Garza to discuss the increasing complexity of managing who can access websites, and other web apps, and what they can do there. A primary challenge is determining whether automated traffic is coming from bad actors and troublesome bots, or perhaps AI agents trying to buy a product on behalf of a real customer.Joel and David dive into the challenge of analyzing every request without adding latency, and how faster inference at the edge opens up new possibilities for fraud prevention, content filtering, and even ad tech.Topics include: -Why traditional threat analysis won’t work for the AI-powered web -The need for full-context security checks -How to perform sub-second, cost-effective inference -The wide range of potential actors and actions behind any given visit As David puts it, lower inference costs are key to letting apps act on the full context window — everything you know about the user, the session, and your application.

Transcript

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0:00.0	If 50% of traffic is already bots, it's already automated, and agents are only really just getting going.
0:08.0	Most people are not using these computer use agents because they're too slow right now.
0:13.0	They're still like previews, but it's clear that's where everything is going.
0:16.0	Then we're going to see an explosion in the traffic that's coming from these tools and just blocking them just because their AI is the wrong answer.
0:24.9	You've really got to understand why you want them, what they're doing, who they're coming from, and then you can create these granular rules.
0:32.0	AI agents are changing how people interact with the web, but most sites still treat them like Bob's.
0:36.8	In this episode, taken from the AI plus A16Z podcast, A16Z partner, Joel de la Garza talks with ArchJet CEO David Mitton about building internet infrastructure for this new era. Here's Derek to kick things off.
0:52.9	Thanks for listening to the A16C AI podcast.
0:55.7	If you've been listening for a while,
0:57.0	or if you're all plugged into the world of AI,
0:59.0	you've no doubt heard about what AI agents
1:00.8	and all the amazing things they theoretically can do.
1:03.8	But there's a catch.
1:05.5	When it comes to engaging with websites,
1:07.3	agents are limited by what any given site allows them to do.
1:10.5	If, for example, a site
1:12.5	tries to limit all non-human interactions in an attempt to prevent unwanted bot activity, it might
1:17.8	also prevent an AI agent from working on a customer's behalf, say, making a reservation,
1:22.9	signing up for a service, or buying a product. This broadstrokes approach to site security
1:27.4	is incompatible with the idea of what some
1:29.5	call agent experience, an approach to web and product design that treats agents as first-class
1:35.0	users.
	...

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