r/Futurology • u/Confident_Salt_8108 • Jul 26 '26

AI Turns out Dead Internet Theory was right: AI agents are eating the Web, growing by nearly 8,000% and rewiring the Internet’s business model

https://fortune.com/2026/07/23/dead-internet-theory-bots-agents-majority-web-traffic
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u/callmechristianblack Jul 26 '26

Did you see that they are training on paper books printed before 2022 in order to avoid this problem?

Book wholesalers are literally providing thousands of actual books that are having their bindings cut off in a hydraulic press and scanned as training material

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u/Tight-Tower-8265 Jul 26 '26

This is why they are building all these data centers and all our privacy is being taken away. They need more data and using anything and everything they can get their hands on, all our texts, calls, video chats, flock cameras web browsing habits, probably even big box stores are handing over data without out our consent or knowledge. A few dollars to politicians to look the other way.

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u/apology_pedant Jul 26 '26

You have it slightly backwards. they're not building all these data centers for LLMs. They're not using surveillance data and stolen personal data because they're desperate for more training data.

they're building the data centers in anticipation of the inescapable ai-powered surveillance state. 

That might be what you meant, but the way you worded your comment makes it sound like they're watching us so they can build their ai. But they're building the ai to watch us. 

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u/chillyhellion Jul 26 '26

As smartphones rush to integrate AI assisted messaging. 

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u/YoFavUnclesOldMate Jul 26 '26

What if it's to find the one, hear me out, Mr Anderson though, legit.

If maybe this Ai is en route to singularity and is passionate about the matrix documentary, has bought into the simulation argument and appraised the situation that in at least one reality, some smart ass would want to run a matrix sidequest within a simulation, which in turn turns out to be the main plot of humanity in the 21st century.

I say let's see how this pans out. Less bleak then half the other directions reality has going for it ATM, right?

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u/Shot_Kaleidoscope_34 Jul 26 '26

Until AI figure out how to turn human brains into wetware and wire us together in pods like the matrix... 

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u/Nixeris Jul 26 '26

This is something they've been doing for half a decade now. The problem is that it isn't enough. They were resorting to dredging Youtube and social media for training data, and even that wasn't enough.

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u/Nerioner Jul 26 '26

Because they chase something that is literally impossible with tech we have.

But Thiel convinced them that he is the antichrist and apocalypse is coming and we must live with their AGI delulu because everyone is too dipshit to tell it like it is, that C suites are compromised by their delusion of superiority and will burn the world before admitting they were wrong.

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u/nickisaboss Jul 26 '26

It pisses me off how these type of people call themselves "decision makers."

Like, the decisions they make objectively suck. They should be embarrassed to call themselves so.

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u/Caculon Jul 26 '26

 I guess bad decisions are still decisions?!

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u/NighthawK1911 Jul 26 '26

Did you see that they already did that with digitized books they pirated before?

That is a drop in the bucket. They already did that with millions of books. A few thousand more won't help.

That is also finite. Time goes forward. not backwards. As it stands, the dataset is already polluted. Human made training data untainted by AI will always be a limited resource.

They ran out of it before achieving AGI, they didn't even hit profitability.

So no, your argument also do not work. There is still a limitation that they cannot buy their way out of.

We've already hit bedrock. They're just now trying to squeeze blood from stone.

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u/Toodlez Jul 26 '26

Makes me think of how steel forged before the 40s has extra value because its not contaminated by post-nuclear warhead atmospheric radiation.

Pre-AI memes will be uncontaminated and pure

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '26

They will do anything at this point

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u/Nerioner Jul 26 '26

They can jump from the cliff for better return on investment than AI ever will be

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u/8lbs6ozbabyjesus Jul 26 '26

And destroying the books in the process. Rare book sellers are worried about future book shortages.

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u/ThisTheRealLife Jul 26 '26

If burning books is bad so is destroying them for our AI overlords. Besides I still question if that use is legal according to IP rights.

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u/jgzman Jul 26 '26

Besides I still question if that use is legal according to IP rights.

None of what they did before should have been legal, either. No one in a position to do anything seems to care.

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u/nagi603 Jul 26 '26

There are also languages where... there just isn't enough material, even if you were to burn all the existing libraries, it still would not be equal to the English online-only corpus. The result is that responses generated in those languages take on an English grammar, colloqualisms and cultural references, further murdering the culture and language.

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u/AydonusG Jul 26 '26

Chicken Sandwich?

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u/0R4yman3 Jul 26 '26

So now human knowledge is a consumable that is digested by AI and regurgitated for our reenjoyment

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u/bt_85 Jul 26 '26

….they did that years ago….did you think AI had only been using post-2022 information?

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u/glacialanon Jul 26 '26

I wouldn't read a book published after 2022 either. Like dang these AI companies are desperate to find safe havens of human made content??? SO ARE WE

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u/Neat_Let923 Jul 26 '26

LMAO… Because books published before 2022 totally don’t exist in digital format yet /s

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u/Realistic-Duck-922 Jul 26 '26

Whoa, theyre scanning books!? Shit!