We’re never going back to the human internet we had. But we can hope for a better internet than the AI-dominated one that is emerging, writes Sarah Gilbert.
AI is killing the web. Can anything save it?
The rise of ChatGPT and its rivals is undermining the economic bargain of the internet
The Internet Will Be More Dead Than Alive Within 3 Years, Trend Shows
All signs point to a future internet where bot-driven interactions far outnumber human ones.
What Was the Internet?
As AI overtakes the web, five writers reflect on how far it’s fallen and what comes next.
What Was the Internet?
As AI overtakes the web, five writers reflect on how far it’s fallen and what comes next.
Reality Roundtable #20 — Hacking Human Attachment: The Loneliness Crisis, Cognitive Atrophy, and Other Personal Dangers of AI - The Great Simplification
Mainstream conversations about artificial intelligence tend to center around the technology’s economic and large-scale impacts. Yet it’s at the individual level where we’re seeing AI’s most potent effects, and they may not be what you think. Even in the limited time that AI chatbots have been publicly available (like Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.), studies show that our increasing reliance on them wears down our ability to think and communicate effectively, and even erodes our capacity to nurture healthy attachments to others. In essence, AI is atrophying the skills that sit at the core of what it means to be human. Can we as a society pause to consider the risks this technology poses to our well-being, or will we keep barreling forward with its development until it’s too late?
AI Might Be Our Best Shot At Taking Back The Open Web
I remember, pretty clearly, my excitement over the early World Wide Web. I had been on the internet for a year or two at that point, mostly using IRC, Usenet, and Gopher (along with email, naturall…
AI-generated ‘slop’ is slowly killing the internet, so why is nobody trying to stop it? | Arwa Mahdawi
Low-quality ‘slop’ generated by AI is crowding out genuine humans across the internet, but instead of regulating it, platforms such as Facebook are positively encouraging it. Where does this end, asks Arwa Mahdawi
How Much of the Internet Is Written With AI?
In a random sample of 10,000 webpages collected in July 2026, one-in-ten show signs of being written or substantially edited by AI.
Is Google about to destroy the web?
Google says adding more AI to its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. One thing is clear: this era of online history is closing.
It Seems a Lot Like Dead Internet Has Actually Come True
The latest data shows that most of the internet is now being dominated by bots and AI agents, making it deader than ever.
Wikipedia Says AI Is Causing a Dangerous Decline in Human Visitors
“With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers may grow and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors may support this work.”
Over 50 Percent of the Internet Is Now AI Slop, New Data Finds
New research from the firm Graphite found that around half of all articles on the internet are AI generated.
AI Slop and the End of Knowledge
As an early fan of the internet, I was amazed that all the knowledge of the world was becoming available to everyone, everywhere, all the time. But things have changed.
There’s a 100% Chance AI Agents Are Already Ruining the Internet
“AI agents” now have enough power and permission to be extremely annoying online.
"The forces that are now shaping AI are the same forces that turned the open internet into monopolistic platforms, converted peer-to-peer participation into precarious labor, and enclosed the digital commons. They are now threatening to capture and enclose thought itself." osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/qahd3_v1/
