AI – DEATH OF THE INTERNET?
Every second, automated bots flood the internet with fake books, music, images and videos. Is the web about to suffocate in AI-generated junk? We speak to experts and set out in search of a new, future-proof internet.
The internet as we know it is dying. It’s suffocating under a deluge of AI-generated junk. Every second, automated bots are flooding Amazon with fake books, Spotify with meaningless machine-made music, Google with vacuous self-help advice and YouTube with news reels consisting of nothing but nonsense. While we still ponder the social consequences of artificial intelligence, the digital knowledge space is already drowning in synthetic garbage. How did it come to this? How did the internet – once celebrated as a place of free knowledge and open exchange of ideas and entertainment – degenerate so quickly into a dumping ground for machine-generated twaddle? Will we soon be fed only AI-hallucinated pseudo-information instead of conducting our own research? Filmmaker Mario Sixtus embarks on a filmic journey through this flood of digital waste, meeting journalists, computer scientists, podcasters, the director of the New York AI NOW Institute and a poorly paid click-worker tasked with training AIs. Featuring Amba Kak, Cory Doctorow, Evan Ratliff, Melanie Mitchell, Emanuel Maiberg, Mats Schönauer, Max Read, Milagros Miceli and Joan Kinyua.