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An automated web agent isn't a replacement for a browser. It's a replacement for a browser plus person. And a person using a browser to access HN does need to

• icebraining 13y ago
  Yes and no. Sure, the automated agents would need to perform some of the roles that are now performed by the user, but it's just one more layer: before, we just had text viewers, and all the formatting was interpreted by the users (add we still see in plain-text emails). Then came document viewers and that whole layer moved from the human to the machine. This is just one semantic layer above. And no, I'm not suggesting that were must build agent capable of human-like learning, that's why much like we had to transition from ad-hoc formatting marks to some kind of standard, we must also help our agents by tagging the information in our websites with standard marks. But the widespread conception of REST is actually an RPC architecture with more endpoints, and that's holding us back from building a smarter web.