2 ms·

The Dead Internet Theory started out as a kind of creepypasta conspiracy theory. Like a ghost story for the digital age. Taking a look at my Facebook feed and

The Dead Internet Theory started out as a kind of creepypasta conspiracy theory. Like a ghost story for the digital age. Taking a look at my Facebook feed and the endless AI generated images with thousands of comments and likes from bot accounts, it appears the Dead Internet is here and soon I will be the only person on the internet who I’m sure is real. Or like intelligent alien civilizations, there will be so many millions of bots between us that two humans will be unlikely to ever make contact. I’m not even sure if I’m talking to a person right now or just a reasonably well fine-tuned LLM. I don’t even know how you’d prove it to me.

andy99 3y ago
I agree with the societal stuff. There's also the hell that's going to arise as more and more "cost centers" - basically anything dealing with people - get pawned off on chatbots. I'm still trying to find what I guess you could call "acute" danger. One of the reasons I'm interested is because there seems to be this overemphasis on what bad actors could use it for, when nobody is watching out for the real "bad" uses like destroying the internet and denying people proper service.
- futureshock 3y ago
  It basically breaks democracy. It was already on shaky ground with the polarization Social Media was encouraging. Now Russia or China or whoever will be able to flood every social network with so much bot activity that they will be able to steer apparent political conversation in any direction they want. People carefully match their political opinions to their tribe. What if your tribe is 10,000 LLM driven accounts that produce mostly normal conversational white noise except for around election time when they inject 5% political talking points? So now to counter Russia and China, Western govs will need their own LLM bot armies to argue counterpoints with the adversarial bots. What’s a human to do? Still not sure if I’m talking to a LLM.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    > Still not sure if I’m talking to a LLM. Don't delve into things you'd rather not turn up

andy99 3y ago

I agree with the societal stuff. There's also the hell that's going to arise as more and more "cost centers" - basically anything dealing with people - get pawned off on chatbots. I'm still trying to find what I guess you could call "acute" danger. One of the reasons I'm interested is because there seems to be this overemphasis on what bad actors could use it for, when nobody is watching out for the real "bad" uses like destroying the internet and denying people proper service.

futureshock 3y ago
It basically breaks democracy. It was already on shaky ground with the polarization Social Media was encouraging. Now Russia or China or whoever will be able to flood every social network with so much bot activity that they will be able to steer apparent political conversation in any direction they want. People carefully match their political opinions to their tribe. What if your tribe is 10,000 LLM driven accounts that produce mostly normal conversational white noise except for around election time when they inject 5% political talking points? So now to counter Russia and China, Western govs will need their own LLM bot armies to argue counterpoints with the adversarial bots. What’s a human to do? Still not sure if I’m talking to a LLM.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  > Still not sure if I’m talking to a LLM. Don't delve into things you'd rather not turn up