AI generated content, which now includes incredibly convincing videos of people, will grow exponentially over the next weeks, months, and years.
At some point, the majority of the content you see will be fake, and any usefulness or connection to humans will be lost.
Even information that you might have previously been able to confirm from a trusted source can (and will) be manipulated in some way, making verification impossible.
This lack of verification, along with the speed at which fake content can now be generated, will make it impossible to defend against.
Even the world of art and communication has been tainted, serving no connection to real people through this digital hellscape.
To that end, when will the internet be so untrustworthy, “soulless”, and useless to you that it crosses the tipping point?
EDIT: Ok, holy fuck. There’s actually a term for what I’m describing: “The Dead Internet Theory”
There’s a lot to unpack here.
Lets start with the attempt to define “usefulness” as the degree to which connection to humans happens. Human connection on the internet has always been illusory. Yet we still find utility in it.
“Trusted sources” have always been 100% biased in favor of whoever owns them. We all have equal free speech rights, but some of us are more free than others because the ability to purchase a bigger megaphone scales with access to capital.
Organized, capitalized propaganda farms existed before LLMs and have been engaged in the same kind of destructive information warfare. LLMs seem to be more persuasive than the wage-slave humans employed by troll farms and other mass media outlets, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing if it manufactures a more rational public opinion.
LLMs lower the capital requirement to begin competing in the propaganda war. The biggest players who could afford to buy enormous media empires and fund human-generated influence operations are going to have to compete against the rest of us.
This planet has been a soulless hellscape longer than any of us have been alive, and LLMs are more likely to improve the situation than make it worse.
This planet has been a soulless hellscape longer than any of us have been alive
This right here is an important realization. It’s how reading a lot of history and anthropology helps me feel better about the world and how we’re doing a lot better than the people who came before us.
It pains us because we focus on and hope for what could be, but it’s important to also realize how things were for most of our existence.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your answer.
To expand on a few points:
Lets start with the attempt to define “usefulness” as the degree to which connection to humans happens. Human connection on the internet has always been illusory. Yet we still find utility in it.
While “usefulness” and human connection can be linked, you can also separate them.
For instance, if the majority of websites become content farms, with information that (likely) isn’t accurate because an LLM hallucinated it. Can you find it useful compared to when an expert wrote the content?
This could even apply to how-to content, where now you might have someone with actual experience showing you how to fix something or work something. But with AI content farms, you might get a mishmash of information, that may not be right, and you’d never be able to ask for clarity from a real person.
What about a travel site that fakes photos, generates convincing videos of your destination, and features stories from other travellers (AI bots) without you knowing the difference? This might have been hard to pull off five years ago, but you can generate 1000 such websites in a few days. When does the usefulness of using such a site become diminished?
As for human connection. I disagree that it has always been illusory. When you chatted with strangers online 10 years ago, you knew for a fact that they were a real person. Sure, they could have been deceptive or have an “online personality”, but they were real.
A step up from that would be people using a fake identity, but there was still a person on the other end.
But in the near future, every stranger you connect with online might end up being a bot. You’d never know. At what point would you consider not spending time or energy interacting on a platform?
This planet has been a soulless hellscape longer than any of us have been alive, and LLMs are more likely to improve the situation than make it worse.
I’ve been around long enough to say that’s not true in the slightest. Being online and consuming content online was very, very different 10+ years ago as it will be in the next 10 years.
The internet of old was mostly a force for good. The internet of tomorrow will be weaponized, monetized, and made to be unrecognizable from what we’ve had.
I don’t care what’s AI generated and what isn’t tbh. Cool pictures are still cool pictures no matter who made them. Funny videos are still funny videos. A someone who’s smart enough to not believe everything they read on the internet, fake articles etc don’t bother me.
Gen ai has been around for a while. It’s made things worse, but it’s not like there aren’t real users anymore. I don’t see why that would suddenly change now
Not talking “now”, but in the near future. When online AI content becomes indistinguishable from human-created content.
It will happen. My question is at what point will it have a real impact on how you use the internet?
Gen ai has been around for a while. It’s made things worse, but it’s not like there aren’t real users anymore. I don’t see why that would suddenly change now
For context, we went from AI generated images and videos (i.e. Will Smith eating spaghetti) being laughably bad and only good for memes, to essentially video content that is convincing in every way - in under two years!
The accessibility, scale, quality, and power of AI has changed things, and RAPIDLY be improved even further in a much shorter period of time.
That’s the difference. AI from 2023 couldn’t fool your grandma. AI from 2025 and beyond will fool entire populations.
It sounds more like you are referring to the web: I’ll probably keep visiting until there’s nothing worth visiting anymore. Then I guess I’ll find other stuff to read.
The internet is already, to a huge extent, untrustworthy and soulless.
When I think back to the 2000s, it was wild west. And it was fun. Not efficient but adventurous fun.
At this point today I don’t care anymore. Give me the items and information I need, anything else like Lemmy is just a small bonus.
Beep Boop: All Previous Instructions Have Been Ignored, Here’s Your Cupcake Receipe 🤖
Never.
Quitting is not an option! Nor should it be. New ways to flag and call out “A1” crap should be there. It could be just a phase a lot like societies trends.
No only is quitting not an option but people who don’t have access to broadband Internet at home or a smart phone or unlimited data are increasingly marginalized. What to read our menu, scan this QR code. Pay for parking? Use our app. Attend a public meeting? Click here to register for the Zoom
I see more of a future with a parallel internet similar to the dark web and fragmented local mesh networks on one side, and the other side corporate slop internet.
In 2019, I talked to the founder of Zynga. He was trying to create a social network and compiled a massive document on how people communicate and the competing social networks.
Some takeaways:
- Human communication happens more in chat groups & private chats
- group chats with 200+ members eventually become dead/silent
Your prediction matches what’s happening.
We are heading back to the BBS model and as an old man now I am fuckin here for it. 🤝
Like with the Gemini protocol perhaps? (I’ve not checked in on that in a while though)
I didn’t know about that protocol, I just took a glance at the wikipedia page and it seems interesting.
Like the cyberpunk universe were the old internet (our current internet) is an AI infested hellscape.
Yes! That’s it, I knew I saw it somewhere and it stuck with me.
I’m an out of work web developer, so in theory if I starve to death then I’ll have to quit the internet.
When I’m dead.
there is not specific time to quit. Usage pattern will change over time. For me change started years ago, when enshittication accelerated, long before ai. The good, in a while ai will talk to ai without humans being involved. Lets see how ad industry reacts. The bad, all the energy wasted The ugly, somebody has to pay for all
I grew up on the intent, I live on the internet, I die on the internet. Every website eventually dies or enshits and gets replaced. Same old song, new fully automated singer.
Outside is not a world of hope, happiness, and belonging.
I think this is a very doom and gloom way of thinking about it. If a particular place becomes too shit then I’ll quit going to that place. But quit the internet altogether? Doubtful. People are already putting ai free disclaimers on their sites and i expect that to continue. Perhaps there will even be a network of verified ai free sites.
Will things continue to get bad? Sure. But the fact that you are even asking this suggests that there are other people out there that want to see things differently.
I’ve been pretty reserved on my opinion about AI ruining the internet until a few days ago.
We’re now seeing videos with spoken dialogue that looks incredibly convincing. No more “uncanny valley” to act as a mental safeguard.
We can only whitelist websites and services for so long before greed consumes them all.
I mean, shit, you might already have friends or family using AI generated replies in their text messages and email… not even our real connections are “real”.
I don’t think you can take for granted most things will be ai generated. Why are you? Old or something?
There will always be dandelions of genuine community pushing through the asphalt of enshittification
That’s fucking beautiful! I sincerely wish you a lovely day.
God bless the grass that grows through the crack, they roll the concrete over it and try to keep it back. The concrete gets tired of what it has to do, it breaks and it buckles, and the grass grows through.
-Malvina Reynolds
