💾 Archived View for jsreed5.org › log › 2023 › 202306 › 20230602-ai-and-the-dead-internet.gmi captured on 2023-06-14 at 13:58:08. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
---
I very rarely use customer support or feedback channels on the mainline Internet these days. I have always preferred to call or even visit in person. Especially when I see chat assistants on a Web site, I always assume they're powered by AI and not staffed by a real human.
Today textmonger wondered^ if replies and even full conversations over other channels are actually AI-driven--and if so, how often that happens. textmonger noted that if this is a common occurrence, it erodes further the individuality of all Internet users, not just the bots themselves. It also adds a kind of paranoia as to whether one is investing emotional energy into a soulless computer.
This reminds me of the so-called "dead Internet" theory^^. The conspiracy theory has been floating around the Web at least since 2019, alleging that sometime in the mid- to late-2010s, the majority of content and discussion on the Internet switched to being generated by bots, AI, auto-generated messages, and other non-human sources. This content has so overwhelmed human-generated content as to be the only thing visible in public spaces such as social media; real interaction happens in private, or more often not at all. The Internet is therefore "dead": no real people are anywhere to be found.
The theory was considered fringe in the late 2010s, but as the presence of AI in the modern world continues to grow, the theory seems less and less insane to me. The stratospheric rise in AI-generated content, from art to fiction to essays to even pornography, is rapidly drowning out content created by human effort. I suspect it will only be a matter of time before someone creates a Gemini capsule written entirely by an AI engine.
---
[Last updated: 2023-06-02]