Annie Tsai

An interesting shift is happening on the internet. And it’s big.

I can’t quite remember when, but sometime in the early 90’s, my dad and I went to CompUSA in San Bruno to buy a Hewlett-Packard desktop computer that had a dialup modem in it. Our first was 2,400 baud. Then 4,800. Then 14,400. Then 28,800. By the time I got my drivers license, I had learned how to use the small screwdriver to disassemble the chassis, take apart a motherboard, upgrade my RAM, and find my way to Fry’s Electronics down in Palo Alto to dig up a better fan or other random parts here and there. That was the computer I took to college, all souped up from Fry’s. 

That internet was one where it felt like the world suddenly spread its wings and anything felt possible. It was one where I found myself getting homework help from a PhD in astrophysics on IRC (internet relay chat) and where the idea of the internet being the primary source of child sexual predation felt unthinkable. The internet of today very much feels like the eyes of an army of spiders is studying me, already anticipating my next move. The internet of tomorrow – literally tomorrow, March 26th – is one where there is a non-insignificant chance that the person who messages you next is an AI. 

The speed from my home’s wireless internet while I write this column is almost 17,000 times faster than back then, and is considered somewhat average by today’s standards. These lightning fast speeds are powering a monumental shift in internet traffic that I don’t think humanity is prepared for: AI surfing, chatting, and creating content on the web.

In the second half of 2024, internet traffic from AI increased by nearly 500% whereas overall internet traffic decreased by just over 7% compared to the first half of the year. According to ahrefs.com, 63% of all websites online receive AI-originating referral traffic, with 98% of AI traffic being sent by three chatbots – ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Even more concerning is that nearly half of all global internet traffic was generated by bots. Half. 

While you were caught up in the fear-mongering around AGI (artificial general intelligence, or when computers have the capacity to understand, think and learn anything just like a human can – this is, by the way, pretty far away) taking over the world and money fueled lobbying circus over AI regulation, you missed that half of the internet is already non-human driven. Europol estimates that up to 90% of content online will be partially or fully AI generated by 2026. 

What most don’t realize is that you don’t need AGI in order to get hundreds of millions of AI agents (some call them bots, others call them avatars or agents) created and programmed by humans in the blink of an eye to do 90% of the work. In customer service, the same holds true – the top 10 or 15 questions by volume usually represent just about 85-90% of the questions asked. The only thing AI needs to have a human-like conversation is a representative enough dataset to train with. 

Mid-2024, Meta started testing their AI Studio through Instagram, where anyone can create an AI to talk to for any purpose. And while I still recommend Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT as a general purpose AI companion, you cannot ignore the tsunami of incredibly popular single purpose AI products out there. 

Take Character.ai, for example, where humans have created over 18 million unique chatbot fictional characters since 2021, and where Google in August 2024 did a reverse acquihire of   $2.8 billion which will enable them to effectively become the Netflix of AI experiential fiction. One might question the need for entire swaths of Barnes and Noble categories when you have “Barclay: cursed relic hunter”, “Price: smoking cessation coach”, “Skye Sutton: fitness trainer”, or “Heartthrob: ethan heartthrob genius” at your disposal. 

So here we are, at the inflection point of the internet. Where content is no longer for consumption, but it is now for interaction. Not with each other, but with AI. And it feels real but also easier and better. 

AGI does not need to be here for humans to lose our humanity, because it’s already happening. The single most important thing we must do from now until the day we die is not forget about those sitting across the room from us. AI might offer perfect-feeling responses sans judgment, but it can’t give you the magic that comes from the messiness and unpredictability of life. Make hugging, asking questions, laughter, tears, and delightful random conversations with people you run into on the street a priority. Choose the harder path, because it’s actually real and truly better.