Edition 2: The silent shift

The silent shift...

 I’ve been reading about the “Dead Internet Theory”. More people on the internet than you think, are in fact bots, and the majority of your online interactions are with bots - not real humans.

This conspiracy, or theory isn’t new - it started back in 2017. The majority of online interactions are now automated. Emails, social media messages, text messages - you name it. Unless you’re there with that person, hearing them speak, watching their mouth move - you wouldn’t be alone by thinking, is this is a human interaction? Or an automated bot response?

The rise of automation isn’t hard to see. AI and its buzzword cousin, “AiFluency,” are everywhere. Fuelled by companies promising to streamline your life, or skyrocket your business. Commonwealth Bank’s shift to AI systems over human workers is just one example - real people replaced by lines of code that don’t need coffee breaks or salaries. It’s efficient, sure, but how many other corners of our digital world have gone this way?

What does it mean to live in a world where your inbox, your feed, your notifications might be shaped by something that doesn’t breathe? Are we already in a place where the line between human and machine is blurred, that we can’t tell the difference?

Or the real question: Would we even notice if we were? 

Reverso
Staff Writer