Middlemen are predestined to death at some point or another unless they can keep demonstrating a compelling service, a reason to exist. Banks are an example of

Middlemen are predestined to death at some point or another unless they can keep demonstrating a compelling service, a reason to exist. Banks are an example of middlemen who continue to exist because they provide a compelling service (everyone needs to store and move monies). Travel companies are an example of middlemen who died because they couldn't provide a compelling service (everyone can do their own bookings now directly with airlines, hotels, et al.). If "AI" puts search engines like Google Search and data aggregators like Yelp out of business, then that's because their services are not compelling. Good riddance. Middlemen continuing to exist without providing compelling services are just collecting free rent, nobody should have to pay rent for nothing. As regards the "open" internet, that died a long time ago when most use cases for the internet centralized on a handful of websites and services. "AI" doesn't change the fact most group conversations happen on Reddit now, that most direct communications happen over Discord or Teams (or email) now, that most traffic gets routed through Cloudflare now, that most companies contract with Amazon Web Services for servers now, that everyone speaks Chrome now, and so on.