The Dead Internet Theory: sci-fi recommendation

Ah… the internet. A place to connect, to learn, to close the distance between people. A land of discovery. A sea of possibilities where the future seems bright!

You winced reading this, didn’t you?

This merry sentiment dominated the early ages of the internet. But today, despite my inability to counterargument the statement, the optimistic tone reads as sarcastic. The frustration toward recent developments slowly overpowered the enthusiasm with this technology.

If I had instead said that the internet is a place of manipulation, fake content, AI slop; a wasteland of missed opportunities; a virtual technocracy where the future seems grim, people are more likely to nod along.

The current mistrust of AI and a growing disquiet with this technology has so many roots that it is hard to list them all here. Bots and LLM models of artificial intelligence are being forced on people before many of us can even understand the downfalls of their usage. Or even its benefits, for that matter. As a research, programming, or pattern recognition tool, these showed great potential. For everything else, it reads like corporate greed.

And maybe, just maybe, forcefully integrating AI into everything might have a negative impact on the internet as a tool and, by extension, on society as a whole.

Let’s talk about one of the most sci-fi theories that can come out of our current situation: the dead internet. Brace yourselves for some neat recommendations!

The dead internet theory

The internet is dead.

Chat bots and automated customer service have been part of human routine for quite some time now, causing people to either mistake chat bots for real people, or the opposite. The dead internet theory is an extreme of this scenario.

What if every interaction we have online is with bots? Would you act as empathetic if you thought that the being you are interacting with is not at all alive?

Recently, Cloudflare released data indicating that the traffic coming from bots has surpassed those by humans. And the theory that soon the internet will be primarily operated by and for AIs is suddenly becoming plausible. 

 It’s like we are living inside a science fiction novel.

The dead internet theory goes beyond the idea of an internet populated mostly by artificial intelligence. It also foresees a future in which most of the content online is generated by AI, who are also responsible for the strict algorithmic rules guiding social interactions in this environment. The internet has become indispensable for society, but without space or need for humans there.

Is this a desirable outcome? To be honest, it feels like a trap to me.

On the other hand, new technologies are always mistrusted at first. We’ve seen it happen several times before. This suspicion is not a bad thing, it is our way of assessing the pros and cons of the technology in question, to make sure we have a better picture of the consequences of its implementation.

And no one can tell a better technological cautionary tale than a talented science fiction writer.

This is the case for the stories I’m about to discuss. I’m going to talk about their themes, and not specific plotlines, so I think I don’t need to issue a spoiler warning.

The machines’ take over

AI has been a great villain in many science fiction stories for a long time, making for unforgettable characters, like HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Skynet in The Terminator franchise, and Ultron from the Marvel Universe.

Hal 9000

But the dead internet theory is a bit more nuanced than the AI villain trope. In the dead internet, AI is not necessarily the bad guy. They could be, but usually we, humans, are the true villains of the story, allowing for the AI to rise unsupervised.

In this trope, AI takes over our place in the control of the internet, keeping humans out and plunging society into a dark age. A more general description of this scenario has a “machine” taking over control of an essential technology, blocking human access to it. These are stories where technology is dead, in the sense that there are no human beings wielding it.

Lost knowledge

In one interaction of this trope, humanity relies so much on the machines to solve our problems that we simply forget how to operate or even explain technology.

In this scenario, the characters are surrounded by technological artifacts that seem all-powerful and magical. This is explored in Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series, for example.

The combination of lack of know-how and the presence of technological gadgets that work-in-mysterious-ways brings religious implications; a mythology is built around the missing knowledge. These stories usually have a rich political context to structure the society that lives among the ruins of a once technological advancement.

AI overlords

Another common plot line has the machines becoming sentient and enslaving people. In this case, the AI is actually nefarious, combining the dead internet theory with the AI villain trope.

In Harlan Ellison’s gory short story I have no mouth and I must scream, AM, a sentient supercomputer, sadistically torture the last humans on the planet, keeping them alive just to continuously harm them (check out the blog post I wrote a about it). In The Matrix, not only did AI become sentient, it also started to feed off human energy to keep their virtual world operational.

Tyrannical AIs make for a great exploration of the “what have we done?” message. These AIs are not outside invaders, like aliens, natural viruses, or mythical beings. They are our creation, and we allowed them to reach their full potential while fostering a deep hatred for humanity.

There is only one solution to this problem: a war against the machines. In Dune, by Frank Herbert, the story is set 10,000 years after humanity wiped out all sorts of technology, fighting against authoritarian AI. It sent society back to post-modern feudalism, with a permanent ban on several types of technology.

             Symbiosis

A tamer scenario for the dead internet theory is one where the AI take-over does not completely hinder human society’s development. Even if the online world is dominated by bots, it still could be a valuable tool for humankind. It doesn’t need to be a good tool, but it is also not as wicked as in the previous examples.

A good example is Dan Simon’s Hyperion series. The Technocore is described as a conglomerate of sentient AIs that declared independence from the Hegemony of Man, the human society unity. They keep in charge of the equivalent of the internet in this world, while providing essential services like faster-than-light transportation (the farcasters) and communication (the fatline transponders).

The machines are effectively a different species altogether that remain collaborative with the human species. This symbiosis can be political, cultural, or even biological.

All the stories mentioned here have a good reputation for a reason. And now, more than ever before, it is time to shine a light on them and discuss the lessons they provide. 

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That’s it for today, folks.

Of all possibilities mentioned, which one do you think is the most likely to happen in real life? Do you have more recommendations for stories featuring AI taking over our technology? Let me know in the comments.

See you next post,

Ra

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Carla Ra is a scientist by day, sci-fi writer by night.

You can check out her flash fiction collectio SCI-FI WEEKATHON for FREE  here.