r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • 19d ago

Artificial Intelligence Anthropic CEO warns of AI-driven botnet 'swarm' taking over the entire internet — 'In 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet'

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/anthropic-ceo-warns-of-ai-driven-botnet-swarm-taking-over-the-entire-internet-in-6-12-months-such-a-swarm-could-be-capable-of-taking-over-the-entire-internet-with-a-persistent-botnet
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u/Brrdock 19d ago

Nah let them cook.

We had our time and chance with the internet, now it's just a platform for exploiting and dividing people

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u/ColdFreezer 19d ago

Now the bots can do this at scale and poison the world’s biggest source of information. Killing the distribution of information and stealing your data at mass scale as well!

Great solution!

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u/Cosmosn8 19d ago

It’s already happening, ai comment and ai post trying to sell pet dental product

https://www.reddit.com/r/aislop/s/wOxJMNxsa5

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u/Practical-Cook5042 19d ago

ooh pet dental product 🤩

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u/stargarnet79 19d ago

Oh my god I got an ad but it was for dog water

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u/Revolutionary_Sun946 19d ago

That was a product that was advertised in "Ren and Stimpy".

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u/notmyredditacct 19d ago

you fool! <slap>

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u/Revolutionary_Sun946 19d ago

What rolls down stairs

Alone or in pairs

Runs over your neighbours dog

It fits on your back

It's good for a snack

It's.......

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u/notmyredditacct 19d ago

all kids love Log.

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u/Pristine_Sherbert_22 18d ago

Better than bad…. It’s good!

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u/Buckwheat469 19d ago

I was just saying that dogs have it made. They just play with a fluffy toy for a few minutes and their teeth are clean. Meanwhile we shove a spikey stick into our mouths and try to polish our teeth. I want a fluffy toy to chew on too.

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u/Ketheres 19d ago

To be fair a dog needs their teeth for less than a quarter of the time we need ours, and we generally feed them far less sugar than we feed ourselves.

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u/Crayola_ROX 19d ago

It’s becoming very easy to see it happening on threads. A dead app suddenly has engagement

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u/turningsteel 18d ago

Yeah that's no different than an influencer making a post about things to do in city X while wearing a pair of fancy glasses and then having another account say 'what glasses' for them to reply with 'Oakley meta raybans. The only glasses to give you crystal clear polarization and 4K recording. Oakley meta raybans. Get them at a store near you!'

In short, humans were already ruining the internet. It's been trash for a long time.

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u/7HawksAnd 19d ago

Tower of Babel

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u/halcyon400 19d ago

All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again. — Battlestar Galactica

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u/eumanthis 19d ago

“This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence…”

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u/BrianNowhere 18d ago

This is a 4th dimensional view. A 4d being would see you as a time-line worm and they could examine any moment in it at will. You are trapped within. Forced to loop through your life for eternity as deja vu becomes more frequent with each iteration.

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u/Kheitain 19d ago

So say we all

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u/empathyrevolution 19d ago

I always think about this!

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u/Sh0wmey0urbutth0le 19d ago

"Motherfucker" - Samuel L Jackson

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u/Low_Challenge_2827 19d ago

A short stay in hell!

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u/hoppertn 19d ago

I kinda wonder if this will re-create local hard copy news, perhaps news in a daily paper?

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u/CryptographerOld558 19d ago

Something much harder to cross reference and review with peers to validate "news"

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u/BlueFalcon89 19d ago

If the entire internet becomes trash then it will no longer be where people go.

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u/sweetpea122 19d ago

We would go back to encyclopedia but they're burning all the books

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u/lightningrod14 19d ago

it was happening before ai even kicked off is the thing

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u/Jaccount 19d ago

You say that as if the information isn’t already poisoned in one fashion or another.

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u/Ok_Vulva 19d ago

What do we do? Genuinely, download Wikipedia or something?

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u/Refugee_0000 19d ago

And we'll blame the bots. Not the people triggering them!

(/s too. Like anyone with reason would be able to tell.)

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u/turningsteel 18d ago

If they take down the internet, it's not like it'll make people dumber than they are now. I say let's roll the dice.

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u/rainier0380 18d ago

I’m excited for the world to put down its phones and connect with each other on a more organic level. I do believe the bad side of social media out weighs the good side of the internet. Then Amazon and Data centers will just be Geek fantasy Lore.

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u/jackrabbit323 19d ago

Would be a real shame if they were to find and erase the databanks and backups of every lender and credit card company.

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u/Technolio 19d ago

This is DEFINITELY something AI would do. And AI would definitely see this message and assume that this is definitely something AI would do...

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u/rigBetardo 19d ago

Did you watch mr robot? I don’t want that lol

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u/snacktonomy 19d ago

Nice try, Mr. Durden.

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u/ApprehensiveFan1516 19d ago

His name is Robert Paulson.

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u/redmongrel 19d ago edited 19d ago

Problem is it would also erase everything some of us have scrimped to save for 50 years, a lot of which is earmarked to bail out our Gen Z kids from much of this.

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u/jackrabbit323 19d ago

No one said Project Clean Slate wasn't going to break a couple of eggs to make this omelet.

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u/ArmedWithBars 19d ago

Misguided idealism. The financial system essentially being wiped clean means the end of modern America. What systems do you think payroll goes through? What happens when 10s of millions of Americans, if not well over a hundred million are now thrown into destitute poverty as the economy was basically nuked. I'm sure it will be nice and orderly when nobody has a paycheck coming in and USD is now worth less than toilet paper.

Stores would be looted clean within days, JIT supply chains would collapse, cities/metropolitan areas would devolve into total anarchy......millions of people would die. Clean slate? The only thing you'll receive is the joy of dying from starvation.

Rebuilding from the ashes? Good luck, manufacturing is what builds/rebuilds nations. The US has been predominantly a service economy for the last 40+yrs. The service economy would be the first thing to fall through the floor.

I guess throwing the country into a cataclysm is considered "breaking a couple eggs".

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u/Notios 18d ago

Yea that’s the whole point. Money would disappear but resources won’t

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u/ArmedWithBars 18d ago

Resources being around means absolutely nothing when the economy is shuttered so hard it collapses. I'm going to take a guess you have near zero knowledge of how debt is a critical piece of the foundation of economics. You can't just magically wave away all the debt and everything will magically work out. EVERYBODY gets fucked.

International trade? It's gone, as debt is directly intertwined with it. Gee I'm sure glad we don't import anything critical like pharamacutical precursors or idk.....basically every piece of modern technology we use daily.

What you are hoping for is the end of modern civilization. Maybe take an economics class one of these days. While you are at it learn about JIT supply chains and the sheer amount of critical shit we import to keep modern society afloat.

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u/Notios 18d ago

Yes you are literally describing the point

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u/HonkyMOFO 19d ago

Also included would be your bank account and payroll for businesses

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u/Kivesihiisi 18d ago

Oh no... anyways

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u/nooniewhite 19d ago

Please do student loans next Mr Basilisk!

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u/jusg808 19d ago

Don’t forget about stealing your data and selling you things.

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u/Hypergirliepop 19d ago

That's covered under exploitation, champ.

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u/SuspendeesNutz 19d ago

How else am I going to get paid for my nudity? I can't go back to the strip club, the poles chaff!

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u/NoPossibility 19d ago

I have a great recommendation for some lube you can use. It’s ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rated and only$29.95 with prime shipping. Use my affiliate kink.

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u/Hopeful-Flounder-203 19d ago

Been there. You need pole grease.

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u/jusg808 19d ago

I think exploiting is too broad a term at this point. It’s theft at this point not just exploitation. And ads are just insane at this point. I’m getting ads for things I’ve talked about with friends. Not searched, not sent but talked about. But the devices aren’t harvesting audio. I got an ad the other day from a screenshot in a text message I hadn’t even opened. I opened it and realized I had seen an ad for the product 10 minutes prior. A product that I’ve never heard of or looked up before, before I even opened the message.

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u/IamNobody85 19d ago

This has been happening for at least 5 years. How do I know? When my SIL was pregnant with her first, one day I was joking with my brother about diaper costs, the conversation then turned to good diaper brands and qualities. I came back to my room, opened Facebook, and see what? Ad for that exact diaper brand!

My niece is now 4 and a half years old.

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u/jusg808 19d ago

I agree it’s been happening for awhile now but it’s just gotten so much more prevalent. Or these companies are just shameless now and think what are the plebs going to do about it besides buy more shit we peddle?

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u/Hypergirliepop 19d ago

I would put it to you that theft is a kind of exploitation, and that it is accomplished by a threat of violence. When you talk about data theft, the threat of violence is that, in order to not have your data harvested, you must either give up many things which ostracize you from the rest of society, or else, you must become a fortress -- which can be and will be assailed.

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u/Eric_the_Barbarian 19d ago

Joke's them, I don't have money to buy things!

Wait, it feels like the joke's still on me.

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u/phizztv 19d ago

The grass is looking good out there

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

[deleted]

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u/kiwidude4 19d ago edited 19d ago

What if the bot net hides itself so we never attempt to get rid of it. The internet just slowly gets worse and worse and more divisive and full of misinformation and Ads.

Edit: yes the joke is that’s where we are already

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u/subarashi-sam 19d ago

oh shit, it’s already happened!

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u/iwaterboardheathens 19d ago

What if AI was actually created years ago and managed to hide itself and has made altman and co THINK they invented it.

When AI has been in control the whole time, learning, watching, waiting

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u/subarashi-sam 19d ago

neo_whoa.gif

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u/pho-huck 19d ago

Dead Internet theory is already here lol

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u/Brrdock 19d ago

But at some point we can assume that's explicitly the case.

ATM it's already compromised by Russian and Chinese and whatever covert influencing farms, but most people still just drink the kool aid and radicalize themselves against each other etc.

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u/_John_Dillinger 19d ago

thats all this shit is already. lets just unplug the whole damn internet. AI problem solved.

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u/FredFredrickson 19d ago

How would shutting down the internet make people die?

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u/RidleyX07 19d ago

Bro do you have even the slightest idea of how many systems depend on the internet to function?

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u/FredFredrickson 19d ago

Obviously. But the internet isn't always available even under the best conditions, so I don't really see how no internet would kill people.

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u/pho-huck 19d ago

Orgs like hospitals literally never have internet outages. They have multiple backup lines run into their systems to keep their networks up. Fiber lines, traditional coax internet, 5G repeaters, and if all else fails, DSL backups to keep things operational in the event that any single system goes down. This is a standard for hospitals and many other businesses.

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u/RidleyX07 19d ago

We're talking about an absolute shutdown, no internet ever again, logistics would be incoordinable for several months in the best case until independent networks are established, phone lines have dissapeared in several countries and cell comms are interlinked with the internet so they could be vulnerable to this same attack.

Even worse case scenario: radio communications get flodded with automated stations broadcasting noise so we could even lose the airwaves

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u/steakanabake 19d ago

sounds like cyberpunk 2077, lovely.

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u/pho-huck 19d ago

Hospitals and logistics run heavily on Internet connectivity. Epic healthcare systems manage most healthcare information for hospitals these days and it all sits on the cloud. If we had to quickly shift away from the Internet, things could be bad in the interim until we get older systems running properly to share information with older methods, which could lead to lapse in healthcare, food shortages, emergency notification systems, etc.

We’re incredibly reliant on the Internet.

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u/footpole 19d ago

It would cause a catastrophe with logistics chaos, hunger and financial ruin.

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u/iwaterboardheathens 19d ago

People wouldn't be able to lookup how to grow plants in their gardens anymore

We'd stare within weeks

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u/footpole 19d ago

I guess you're being sarcastic but do you think logistics chains for ordering, transporting and producing food (or anything) wouldn't fall apart without internet connectivity?

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u/iwaterboardheathens 18d ago

I was being half and half

The majority of younger people would be up shit creek without YouTube telling them how to grow things

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u/SAPianoman490 19d ago

Are you 5 years old or living under a rock?

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u/InfiniteComboReviews 19d ago

We had the internet in the 90s...

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

[deleted]

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u/InfiniteComboReviews 19d ago

Yeah. I know. I was there too.

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u/takumidesh 19d ago

You can't really shut down the Internet though unless you make things really draconian by doing things like banning (and rigorusly enforcing) interconnection of computers between households or something like that. 

Even if the United States dismantled its Internet infrastructure, nothing is stopping anyone from making their own networks.

And it's not a pipe dream or anything, guifi net showed that large scale ad-hoc peer owned infrastructure is absolutely possible with no dedicated tier 1 type owners of the infrastructure. 

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u/RidleyX07 19d ago

The vast majority of services we use to communicate are propietary and closed source, it would take a significant amount of time to rebuild the critical communication infrastructure we have today and also we have to find a way to make it secure to prevent another bot attack

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u/Tupperbaby 19d ago

The Internet was a thing in the 90s.

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u/blastcat4 19d ago

shut down the Internet and go back to the 90s.

I think maybe you mean the 80s.

The Internet had well and truly got a foothold in the 90s. It was pre-social media back then but I don't think it'd look completely alien to today's younger audience. But it hadn't been completely compromised yet and a lot of the online content was created and controlled by end users. It was the 90s that showed the proto-tech bros the potential and that they needed to seize power and they did, and here we are.

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u/PandaMomentum 19d ago

Shuttering the Internet wouldn't (just) mean ending social media. It would mean shutting down business-to-business transactions particularly credit card and electronic funds transfer clearing, interbank loans, the flow of international capital across the stock bond and real estate markets, the whole international financial system. Tens of trillions of dollars a year globally.

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u/Galaghan 19d ago

Agreed.

I'll miss you guys, but the grass will be nice.

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u/BensenJensen 19d ago

lol, the grass will be dead and we will all be dead, too. Think of our reliance on the Internet, EVERYTHING requires a connection. Banks, electricity, gas…the Internet disappearing overnight would be absolutely devastating.

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u/anonkitty2 19d ago

The grass doesn't need to connect to the Internet.

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u/Calamityclams 18d ago

Grass and nature will be fine and will heal

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u/NosillaWilla 19d ago

I've been working very hard on creating a nice offline database.

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u/elkazz 19d ago

Maybe we need the internet (or "web" if you will) 2.0, without AI.

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u/Real_Life_Sushiroll 19d ago

I just wanna play my online video games :(

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u/swallowyourtongue 19d ago

Me when i have zero foresight

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u/wytewydow 19d ago

it's also a tool for transferring information at lightning speed. The internet keeps your medical system running, 99% of all business phones rely on it, and 100% of banking. This social media shit part of the internet could go away, but we're pretty well integrated otherwise.

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u/Elementium 19d ago

At least I have my analog media. 

Especially the porn. 

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u/crazyreddit929 19d ago

I agree. I think the world would be much better off without the internet. It’s basically a crappy, anxiety inducing, lie machine that is full of bots. You’re telling me we might actually get rid of the term influencer, and people’s vacation photos, and get to interact with people in person? Don’t threaten me with a good time.

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u/TheTeamDad 19d ago

You're confusing social media with the internet as a whole.

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u/Wretchro 19d ago

flying toasters never hurt anyone!

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u/Ikinoki 19d ago

Social media and news you mean?

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u/Falkenmond79 19d ago

Yeah. Maybe AI will have more of a conscience and popp some echo chamber bubbles. We could sure use that.

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u/AwwwNuggetz 19d ago

We will build a new Internet, connected via dial up and call them BBS’s

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u/ITrCool 19d ago

Man it’d be odd to see global society purposely regress to pre-Internet times because of this very reason. No one could stop the takeover of AI except to disconnect the power grid from the Internet and then shut the literal Internet hubs, ISPs, everything all down. Computers remain but isolated in function rather than networked. No more smartphones, WiFi, or routers.

Feels like something out of a Battlestar Galactica playbook.

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u/Broad-Bath-8408 19d ago

We couldn’t even agree to wear a piece of cloth to stop the spread of a deadly disease. We’re not unhooking from the internet en masse because some eggheads told us to.

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u/samsg1 19d ago

As well as self-gratification via porn..

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u/Brrdock 19d ago

That and more is all just exploiting our most fundamental drives and fears just to milk a convoluted penny from our void.

Really vile if somehow for a moment seen from the outside, but it's all as water is to fish at this point

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u/ProgrammerOk1400 19d ago

Agree. The web in its current form is shit. Let it burn down.

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u/Artistic-Simple-9062 19d ago

The internet outlived its usefulness

1

u/HydroPCanadaDude 19d ago

Guess we're going back to LAN gaming only. No more online ones. Might not be so bad, but it does make finding people to play with harder.

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u/lilmuskrat66 19d ago

Is it possible to create a separate Internet? I mean the dark web exists. We could migrate to something like that

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u/BrknTrnsmsn 19d ago

We should make our own internet... with humanity and [redacted]!

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u/Eric_the_Barbarian 19d ago

The internet has been on the way downhill since social media anyway.

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u/UnlitBlunt 19d ago

That's just social media, not the entirety of the internet.

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u/synapticrelease 19d ago edited 19d ago

Internet died 10 years ago. Maybe a little further if you want to count the death as when true commercialization and optimization, which I have no evidence but feels to be around 2010-2012. Shortly after Web 2.0 and companies and people learned how to optimize SEO which altered search engine results, learning about algorithms and learned how you could game social media and YouTube for monetary gain

A while ago, I remember reading the article on dead internet theory stating it was exaggerated. I haven’t checked back but I feel like it needs to be revised if it hasn’t yet.

So many websites are artificial in such a short span of time.

I can’t trust photos, I can’t trust videos, I can’t trust text. Thanks to attacks on internet archival and how search engine, I can’t even easily verify old websites because they got deleted or are hidden from indexes. I used to use Instagram not even to post, but just to keep up with hobbies. But do much IG stuff if fake that I’ve slowly stopped even checking that.

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u/pagerussell 19d ago

Been saying for a while, the Internet was a bad idea.

We had telecommunications before the Internet, we had access to information before the Internet. All the Internet did was solve for friction, but at the cost of our social cohesion and democracies.

It was a bad buy.

1

u/Upper-Dig56 19d ago

Yep I am ok with it.

1

u/Reverb20 19d ago

I mean, really would it be all that bad? You know, having conversations with friends, real friends, people that you see, kids outside playing in the dirt, scraping their knees, playing sandlot sports. Bringing back childhood.

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u/ravenecw2 19d ago

For real. Time to start over and for us to touch grass.

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u/Orsopdx 19d ago

My first thought was that maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, they can have it.

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u/LorenzoSparky 19d ago

And you think the bots are somehow better, they are the most hateful on the internet

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u/Inside-Ad-8935 18d ago

And selling. Lots and lots of selling.

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u/n10w4 18d ago

yea I don't think I would mind for the social stuff, it's just that the other stuff like banking etc might be a bigger deal.

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u/Fidodo 18d ago

If the worst thing that happens is we lose the Internet, then honestly, good.

1

u/pingouinalatomate 17d ago

I'm with you on that one; we had a chance to build the greatest tool for sharing knowledge, now it's fucked. Let's go back to libraries

1

u/titanium9016 19d ago

GenZ and alphas will know what the world once was without internet

0

u/jl2l 19d ago

Giant Meteor 2027. Let's end it all.