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”
The moment I find that there’s not enough opportunity for self-growth on it for it to be worth it
I have pretty much just 3 websites I use regularly (here, youtube, twitch) and some random ones I look up if i need something specific. If I couldn’t block ads anymore, I dont think i’ll keep using youtube. I don’t expect anything meaningful regarding other people outside non-corporate services anyway.
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
There will always be areas online with real people. Namely, my irl friends.
Yes, of course. I’m not talking about that.
Even here, Lemmy. How long before the replies you get are from bots, and you’re posting for bot users? Will there even be a point to continue wasting time on that?
When you see news being reported, at some point, you’ll have no idea what’s real or fake. And it will be so ubiquitous that you’ll need to spend a considerable amount of time to even attempt to verify whether it’s true or trustworthy. At what point will you simply stop paying attention to it?
I don’t think I’ll ever stop paying attention. We’re already surrounded by conmen. We’re just automating those conmen. And we’ve had fake news forever.
And we’ve had fake news forever.
Yes, limited in their scope.
The fake news of yesterday still needed real people to spread disinformation. Fake news of tomorrow will have convincing videos, photos, “verified sources”, interviews, article upon article expanding on the disinformation, and millions of bots to promote the content through social media and search.
“Fake” will be real enough to have catastrophic effects on actual people.
It’s like going from spitting wads of tissue out the end of a straw to dropping hydrogen bombs. We aren’t prepared for what’s to come in the landscape of fake news.
What you’re describing already exists in the conservative media ecosystem. And yeah, we weren’t prepared for it. That’s why the president of the united states is a septuagenarian felon.
Yes, so imagine that multiplied by a billion.
AI is just one more tool in the arsenal of propaganda for them. People in power haven’t even needed computers and advanced technology to get people to commit atrocities, we’ve been doing that for centuries.
So yes, the landscape is changing drastically. As it has done before. I believe it’s possible for us to adapt when that happens, as we have before. We’re not yet at the point you describe so I couldn’t say how it’ll happen. But I have a blind faith that it’s at least possible for us. This doesn’t mean we should relax and wait for it to happen, but I would rather think about solutions than “oh no we’re fucked nooo”.
Maybe (?) thiat’s controversial but “human connection” is not the first thing that comes to my mind when I consider whay I’m currently online.
So losing the humanity of the internet sucks but I can find way to work around it.
Maybe (?) thiat’s controversial but “human connection” is not the first thing that comes to my mind when I consider whay I’m currently online.
What I mean by that is when you looked back at content from 5+ years ago, you know that a real person wrote, drew, recorded, thought of, put effort into it.
We had interconnectedness, and as human beings, we really should do what it takes to not lose that.
There will be no more looking at photography, artwork, music, or movies as a marvel of human effort, skill, and talent. To me, that’s a huge loss.
When you read a blog years ago, you were reading another person’s experience, and that had value.
Information from a resource was researched and had input from an expert human being, and/or a team of them. That had value.
So losing the humanity of the internet sucks but I can find way to work around it.
Online? If so, how long do you think you can sustain it? If the majority of the internet or digital content you see becomes AI generated, with no way of knowing, what then? Will you invest time to use a future Lemmy where your interactions are probably all with bots?
There will be no more looking at photography, artwork, music, or movies as a marvel of human effort, skill, and talent. To me, that’s a huge loss.
I’ve been consuming content from a detached rehashed business position long before AI were a thing.
I’ve never felt the “human touch” in, say, a Marvel movie.
And when I mentioned workarounds I meant offline, as one does.
When I’m dead.
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.
We are heading back to the BBS model and as an old man now I am fuckin here for it. 🤝
Like the cyberpunk universe were the old internet (our current internet) is an AI infested hellscape.
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.
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I’d just have to ignore most “user-generated” content.
Dead Internet hypothesis is only applicable to user-generated content platforms.
AI will affect far more than just social media shit posts, though.
All news (local, national, global). Educational sites. Medical information. Historical data. Almanacs/encyclopedias. Political information. Information about local services (i.e. outages). Interviews. Documentaries.
I mean, all of these can be easily manipulated now in any medium. It’s only a matter of how quickly AI saturates these spaces.
Trustworthy sources will few and far between, drowned out by content that can be generated thousands of times faster than real humans can.
What then?
I even worry about things like printed encyclopedias being manipulated, too. We stand to lose real human knowledge if AI content continues to accelerate.
There really aren’t viable alternatives to those things, unless they are created (again), like before the internet was used for everything.
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.
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
Honestly, while I can still get information (of any kind) I won’t quit, just use it less. At the very least, I’ll use it to download DRM free music, movies, books, and TV shows and consume them offline locally.
As long as you can do messaging / video / voice chat, do work, taxes and groceries over cable, internet will be here. Everything else is called entertiment and it’s optional. You can as well play games or watch movies or read books or listen to music instad of watching news and nothing will hapen because it’s just another type of entertiment at this point.
If you’re scared of music or movies generated by AI listen to music and watch movies produced before year 2020. That’s it. You won’t have enough time in your life to experience all of content humanity created to this point no matter how much you will try.
Groceries over cable? Man, Ethernet has really come a long way
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.
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
