It seems we’re done for

I don’t know about you, but it feels like we humans are slowly becoming… the past. That’s no longer conspiracy talk or exaggeration. The data is here, the numbers are here, and the general vibe is that the digital world has melted into some kind of slurry made of algorithms, bots, AI videos and, of course, people who still argue about history, stereotypes and those damn kids.

Here are a few “little things” that might make you want to buy a piece of land, raise chickens and forget what Wi-Fi is.

More than half of the internet isn’t human

According to the latest Imperva report, 51 percent of all internet traffic is now created by bots. Of that, 37 percent are “bad bots” whose mission is anything but noble: scraping data, spreading spam, cracking passwords and clicking ads to trick the system.

In other words, while you’re watching a video of a dog riding a skateboard, three bots have already checked your inbox, opened five pop-ups and tried to sell you an NFT shaped like a zucchini.

For six years straight, the number of malicious bots has been growing. And now that AI can generate text, images and “people,” those bots are becoming smarter, faster and… more persistent. In short: the internet is becoming less human and more of a robotic aquarium full of goldfish with bad intentions.

Artificial media that don’t exist, yet publish every day

Next on the menu. NewsGuard has identified 1,271 websites that look like real newspapers, with names like iBusiness Daily or Global News Network, but all the content is written by AI.

No editors, no journalists, no accountability.

The result? Thousands of articles a day, full of imaginary celebrity dramas, fake elections, moon miracles and “statements” that nobody has ever made.

The purpose? Clicks and ads.

So AI writes the fake news, another AI translates it, a third AI distributes it, and a fourth comments on it. And thus the circle of life, or the death of journalism, goes on.

If it feels like the internet is filling up faster than we can read it, you’re right. Generative AI doesn’t sleep. And it doesn’t know what ethics is.

YouTube – AI’s new Bible

When AI search engines (Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity) need a source, they quote YouTube 200 times more often than TikTok.

Meaning: if you filmed a cooking video with your grandma, there’s a good chance AI is now using it as “a relevant source on the dietary habits of elderly European women.”

Most-watched content? You guessed it: AI-generated shorts. Slideshow videos with robot voices telling you “you must watch this until the end” (and you never do).

Google engineers are already speculating that in the future, over 90 percent of YouTube content could be generated by AI.

AI analyst Nina Schick put it plainly: “By 2025, 90 percent of online content will be artificially generated.”

Soon we’ll be watching AI reacting to an AI video about an AI video. Digital inception.

Attention? What attention?

The average human attention span today is 8.25 seconds.

That’s less than a goldfish (9 seconds, just so you know).

And Facebook research shows that the average user looks at a piece of content for just 1.7 seconds before scrolling on.

Zoomers are a special chapter: within one hour they can switch between up to 15 apps. So while you’re opening an email, they’ve already jumped to TikTok, switched to Spotify, watched reels, screenshot a meme, opened a message, forgotten why they opened it, and started again.

This isn’t just entertainment. It’s a social phenomenon. Our concentration is in shambles, and our brains operate in “notification mode.” Ironically, we’ve never had more content, nor less patience to experience it.

AI knows everything – except when it knows nothing

LLMs like ChatGPT sound smart. They’ll politely write you a recipe, a business email, a motivational quote. But their factual accuracy is often between 50 and 70 percent.

Meaning every other answer may be at least half-invented.

Studies show that GPT-3.5 answers correctly about 49 percent of the time; the other 51 percent it simply hallucinates.

And when it does, it sounds confident. Like that colleague who explains something completely wrong with full enthusiasm, and nobody corrects him because he sounds convincing.

New models are better, but they still confidently make things up. So if AI tells you that “penguins are mammals that live in Finland” – double-check.

Million out of work because of AI

According to a U.S. Senate report, more than 100 million people in the United States could lose their jobs by 2035 due to AI.

That’s almost two-thirds of the workforce.

Most at risk: fast food (up to 89 percent of jobs replaceable), customer support, transport, administration.

But white-collar workers aren’t safe either: lawyers, accountants, designers, journalists… anyone who has ever said “AI could never replace this” might be in for a surprise.

But the real danger isn’t losing your paycheck. It’s losing your identity.

Work gives us meaning, structure, social status. When that disappears, a void follows.

The World Economic Forum warns that mass unemployment could lead to “a loss of purpose, identity and belonging.”

In other words: people without jobs, with too much time and too much internet. And we know how that ends: conspiracy theories, forums and comments like “I’m moving to the woods to grow popcorn.”

Politics and bottle caps

And now imagine this: while all this is happening, while bots take over the internet, AI writes the news and half the workforce is at risk of disappearing, politicians are debating about bottle caps that won’t come off, and WhatsApp surveillance.

Our laws and debates look like Windows 98 while the world is running on quantum processors.

So what now?

So, are we done? Maybe. But we’re not carbon dust yet. We have a choice: we can pretend this will all pass “like when smartphones arrived” (spoiler: it won’t), or we can start talking seriously about what it means to be human at a time when everything about us can be replaced – except perhaps our sense of humor and irony.

Because while bots crawl the internet and AI writes news nobody asked for, what still makes sense is critical thinking, empathy and healthy cynicism.

And yes, if everything truly goes downhill – there’s always that plan with the chickens and the woods. Just be careful not to get replaced by a tiny robot that pecks corn better than you.