AI can start the internet dark age
The internet was supposed to be like a huge library where anyone could find information. AI tools that write text have changed this dream. They can create tons of content for us!
But here’s the problem: libraries work because there’s not too much stuff to organize. When AI creates new content every hour, it becomes really hard to know what’s real and what’s fake. We might be heading toward a time when we have more words than ever, but we can’t trust most of them.
A “closed” internet?
The future internet won’t feel open anymore. You’ll ask a question and get an answer that combines thousands of sources you never see. Since it costs almost nothing to make this content, there will be way too much of it.
This creates two different internets: The messy one will be full of spam, fake news, AI-generated articles, and content no real person wrote. The clean one will be smaller websites where you know who wrote what, but you might have to pay to use them.
A closed internet doesn’t really feel like the internet anymore.
Problems we expected
Obviously, when AI floods the web with fake content, searching becomes really hard. It’s like looking for something valuable in a huge pile of trash. The real information is still there, but it’s buried under millions of fake pieces.
Fake news and lies become super easy to make. Political propaganda, fake reviews, and scam emails can be created endlessly. Copyright laws can’t keep up with all this AI content. Meanwhile, many writing jobs disappear because “good enough” AI content is free.
Sneaky problems we’ll notice later
If future AI learns from today’s AI-written content, it gets worse over time. The quality drops, and everything starts to sound the same. Also, personalized feeds mean you and your friend might see completely different “facts” about the same topic.
Sometimes AI content survives even when the original human-written source disappears. Future historians might only have AI summaries of AI summaries, with no way to find what real people actually said. I call this a “digital dark age.”
Watermarks (hidden marks in AI content) seem like a solution, but bad actors can probably remove or fake them. This starts a never-ending game of cat and mouse. All this detection and creation uses tons of computer power and energy.
When AI says something false about you, who’s responsible? The programmer? The user? The company? Nobody knows.
How to keep things working
Technology can help, but only if people use it right. We could have digital signatures on photos from the moment they’re taken. Browsers could show you if content is real or AI-made. Search engines could rank known writers higher than anonymous ones.
We could train AI on smaller, carefully chosen collections of human writing instead of the whole messy internet. Websites could require real ID to post content. People could pay for quality news from real editors. Professionals like doctors and lawyers could be held responsible for what they write online.
Governments could make rules about labeling AI content while protecting companies that try to filter out the junk.
Regular users like us can help too. We can bookmark trusted websites instead of searching for everything. We can use browser tools that hide AI spam. We should support websites that show their sources and use real authors’ names. Though honestly, people haven’t been great at supporting what’s good for society so far.
None of these ideas are revolutionary, but they might help us get through the tough times ahead. I’m not sure how to completely avoid the internet’s dark age though.
A split internet, but not a dead one
The internet won’t die - it will split in two. The public part becomes like a noisy casino with flashing lights and games run by strangers. Inside that, there will be smaller, carefully managed spaces where you know who wrote what and can trust the information. Think of these like private clubs with strict (and sometimes annoying) rules.
Whether we slide into darkness or keep things working depends more on how humans handle this situation than on what AI can do. AI might bury the truth under a mountain of convincing lies and boring content. The dark age doesn’t have to happen, but it probably will.
Let me be clear - I love AI technology. Being able to talk to a computer feels like science fiction come true. But I love the open internet more. I think there are real risks when machines learn to write like humans.
(One last thing: Social media already broke the web. AI is just breaking what’s already broken.)