Overview
- Speaking at SXSW in Austin, Matthew Prince linked the surge to generative AI’s growing data appetite.
- Prince said an AI agent might visit about 5,000 sites for a task a human would complete by checking five, roughly a 1,000× jump in requests.
- He proposed on‑demand “sandboxes” for agents that spin up and shut down instantly, forecasting millions of such instances created each second.
- He warned of mounting strain on data centers, CDNs and security layers, describing steady, ongoing growth unlike the short pandemic spike.
- Coverage also cited Imperva’s report that automated activity already exceeds half of web traffic, with record levels of “bad bot” behavior.