The Future of the Internet Looks Bleak

Image: Badly edited by author

Sorry folks, I'm off on another "doomer" rant again.

I see a lot of people touting how ChatGPT and other generative AI products are going to usher in the next revolution of the Internet.

I call bullshit.

Put aside the fact that the leading companies are losing money hand over mouth and burning through copious amounts of resources. Without that ability to make sustainable returns, there is every chance this current wave of AI will implode, wreaking havoc on its way out.

There's a bigger issue at play. While they have created useful products, something fundamental is missing.

Connection.

The Internet was once the great connector of the world, allowing almost anyone to communicate with anyone and build and engage with communities of like-minded people who were passionate about a topic, hobby, craft or issue. Yes, that Internet still exists today, but it's drowned out by the trifecta of infection — algorithms, influencers and advertising — which make the online experience a pretty awful one.

AI products are only going to continue a trend that's been growing in technology over the last 5 years or so, and that isolationism.

Think about it. What are the two biggest innovations in that time span? The Metaverse and generative AI. I heard you laugh there. Yes, the Metaverse was a colossal waste of time, money, and resources, but at the heart of it was a false pretense — this will be a new technology that will help us "connect" on a "deeper level." Or, as Mark Zuckerberg put it in a Founder's Letter that should be hung up in the Hall of Fame for Bad Calls —"Feeling truly present with another person is the ultimate dream of social technology. That is why we are focused on building this."

Truly present, until you take off the rose-tinted VR glasses, and you'd see straight through that lie. It might seem like you're connected to others, but in reality, you're just alone, at home, sitting in a pile of drool, more disconnected than ever. I mean, remember that Apple Vision Pro advert? Let's interact with our families, but through the lens of a headset that will give you permanent neck damage, take you away from the moment with other distractions, and have your kids thinking it's normal to grow up looking at googly-eyed projections of people's eyeballs.

What would we do without technology?

The other innovation is, of course, generative AI. One of the more unsettling developments has been the many failed hardware devices, which all pitched themselves as an assistant or, worse, a friend. Reminder: AI is not your friend. Again, these devices tried to show how engaging with an AI, often on a very personal level, could improve connection with other humans, and that they somehow enhanced the human connective experience. The reality is obvious: they would turn people inward. They would become reliant on an AI to do their thinking, to negotiate their problems, to be their sounding board — you know, instead of using other human beings with lived experiences. It's almost like… that's the intention?!

The problem goes even further back. Social media arrived with the same promises to connect the world. In fairness, it did actually live up to them for a few years — god, I miss those days — but then the wheels came off. We realized that social media wasn't social at all. Most connections and "friendships" meant nothing and didn't exist beyond the screen. Most engagement was fake or designed to game algorithms. It was data harvesting at an enormous scale, disguised as an entertainment channel, with the intention of filling the pockets of people like Mark Zuckerberg. Most of all, it was designed to get us hooked on a product that involved us being disconnected and isolated from society, becoming more and more dependent on it to function.

What I'm saying is, this has been coming. Our technology overlords have been pushing for some time to get you reliant on their products and services, cutting you off from the real world in favor of the dopamine wheel.

And I think this is the same fate that awaits the future of the Internet experience, especially as AI continues to infiltrate every facet of it.

Yes, it will be more powerful than ever. Yes, you'll have all the information you could ever want, neatly packaged up into digestible answers that are tailored to you, dumbed down again and again, all at the typing of a prompt, projected in front of your very eyes through smart glasses or headsets or some other kind of "immersive" experience. You'll be able to have feeds of custom content generated for you, intricately detailed by generative AI to match your every whim and desire, like changing an actor's head for yours in a feature film (honestly, what the fuck), or have music created that fits your exact tastes, or whatever it may be.

The online experience will become truly unique and individual.

If that sounds like fun, you're missing the point here.

Behind it all will be a grim truth — we'll have destroyed the community and connection that underpins the Internet experience. There will be no common ground. No shared moments. Nothing to tie community, friendships or relationships too.

When we perform all our functions, searches, queries and more through a single interface that only speaks back to us, it creates an increasingly lonely online existence. Sure, we might be able to share the result of this output on whatever is left of social media platforms — or whatever comes after them, like OpenAI's rumored social network that will just be another data harvesting machine — but we'll find it's only engaged with by other AI bots and auto-responses.

It will be as Big Tech hoped: an isolated experience that traps users and makes them dependent on their technology, giving them ample opportunity to drain us of cash and data.