Many are pondering what the future of the Internet looks like. Nobody can dent the fact that, over the past 30 years, this innovation has taken over as a central component for society. Whether it is personal or business, our lives are basically tied to services offered.

Therefore, considering what comes next is a sensible move.

It does not take too much insight to determine that AI is taking over. This is ideal for the digital realm. It is rather simple to operate "in a box". Real world AI is something that might take a bit longer.

That said, we are certain to see a merging of the digital and physical. Not only will this come about via mixed reality but with "box" AI embedded in real world devices. The most obvious is humanoid robots and other machines that have mobility in the physical world.

For this reason, it is best to take a look at one possibility as to where things are going.

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The Future Internet Is Swarm

The economic impact for what we are proposing is enormous.

Thus far, AI is big. It was put together by Big Tech, using super-clusters to train its models, feeding enormous amounts of information. We are likely to see something different in the future as AI agents take over.

Because of this the era of monolithic "super-models" is fading. Instead, swarms of small, task-specific agents will collaborate, outperforming giants on niches like coding or finance.

We are going to see billions of agents generated by the end of this decade. They will be "partner" to form clusters (or swarms) of agents. These will take on larger tasks, ultimately becoming an important part of the economy.

It is all part of the swarm intelligence concept that many have discussed over the years.

Swarm Intelligence

The core of this concept is scalability in artificial intelligence and algorithmic efficiency. Over the past few years, we saw this accelerate. Each layer of the AI is improving at a dramatic rate.

We are rapidly moving towards a period where swarm intelligence emerges. It might still be a few years away since the AI agent development is only starting.

However, as these agents gain utility, others will be created to bridge the activities, compounding the impact of the swarm. It will most likely be collaborative, at least to start, with humans involved in the process.

It will extend not only to the digital world but also the physical realm via robots.

Here is how it can be summaried:

Swarm Intelligence’s core principle is decentralized control. In swarm robotics, robots make collective decisions based on local information, enabling adaptability, scalability, and robustness in tasks like search and rescue or environmental monitoring.

With the word robots, simply replace that with "agents". Of course, it is probable the agents are embedded into the robots.

The limit of these is near limitless.

Each agent in a swarm follows simple rules and behaviors. The complexity arises not from individual sophistication but from the interactions of these simple behaviors across the group.

Once again, we come back to compute. AI agents are going to require a ton of inference. This will be the focus of major data centers over the next few years. It is one bottleneck the average individual is not talking about. Nevertheless, the firms behind these buildouts are well aware of it.

Intelligence swarms can pop up anywhere. It is all part of the decentralization process. We are seeing this occurring on a small scale. While the present Internet is dominated by Big Tech firms, there are moves underway to provide more capabilities at the edge.

This is going to be one of the next frontiers in computing.

Swarms might connect smartphones together to provide a service (or services). There are already AI models which run on Raspberry PI and other smaller devices. It is something that will keep evolving.

In closing, consider this possibility, that the future of the Internet is swarm intelligence. Actually, a case could be made we are already there with humans performing this.