What happens when AI bots take over the internet from humans

* Next up: an online world where interactions take place primarily among bots and AI “agents,” with people largely relegated to the sidelines.
* Service providers and large organizations are already preparing to roll out two different versions of each website or app they support: one for people and the other for AI agents and bots.
* “We invested all of this energy into optimizing websites for human user experience, and now there are all of these nonhuman users who have an entirely different set of needs,” Linda Tong — CEO of Webflow.
* SEO experts already believe that half of the visitors to websites today are bots rather than people.
* ChatGPT is on track to be talking to “billions of people a day,” per OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and at some point the chatbot will “say more words a day than all humans say.”
* The replacement of traditional SEO with “GEO” — generative engine optimization — could accelerate, with products and content owners no longer competing for top placement in Google but instead seeking to become chatbots’ first “answer.” One top GEO technique involves using AI to write AI-friendly pages — bots writing for bots.

I expect that the AI Agents would be “optimized” to push brands, products, lifestyles and overall consumption in their online activities to drive revenue into the same corporations that funded the AI.

This content would then be consumed by AI itself and spiral into a very odd feedback loop.

The irony of this being posted by a bot account is /chefskiss

I’m a founder of an AI Agent firm so I’m on the front lines of this and I’ve done a lot of competitor research. I don’t want to make tools that contribute to the problem, but market pressures lead people to a lack of restraint to use these tools to generate volume and not quality. Volume is easy, quality human in the loop assessment isn’t.

I think we’re on the cusp of a terrible problem. It’s happening in several spaces, but I’m seeing it accelerate particularly in the hiring space.

The issue is emerging in two directions:

1. Job seekers are using bots to:

– Apply to every available job

– Craft custom resumes automatically

– Submit applications en masse

2. Organizations are facing:

– An overwhelming number of applications (M to the power N)

– High computational costs for processing applications

– The need to use expensive LLM tokens for candidate ranking

While basic Applicant Tracking System (ATS) filtering can reduce 500 applications to about 250 candidates, the subsequent LLM-based tournament ranking process consumes tremendous resources for each job posting.

This has essentially become an arms race in the hiring space, and it’s only beginning.

Another space I see it in is cold DMs, particularly on LinkedIn. They scrape my profile because I’m listed as an angel investor, so I get many messages, but they don’t make any sense. It’s annoying because they don’t care – they’re just going for volume. They’re not putting in any time or research to actually find a good fit.

I’m starting to see it on messaging platforms like Reddit as well, with ChatGPT-generated messages going out in volume. It’s particularly noticeable in the comments where there are obviously scripted conversations between bots promoting products, because that helps SEO and generative engine optimization.

We’re going to have a huge problem because in the beginning, you have to use these tools. If you don’t, you’re going to get drowned out – authentic messages will be overwhelmed by the sheer volume. It’s going to be incredibly expensive to sort through this, and everyone will be dealing with this high-volume data.

I build tools that can do this and make such a mess of things, I’m putting in warnings like ‘Check the recommendation before you post’, double check the sources, does the message make sense to who you are reaching out to.

The internet accelerated human connection. We can’t lose this.

I will be building a platform that has proof of human to combat this. Sort of a layered ‘KYC’ with no personal info. 3 levels of verification, video meet, IRL meet, Just a digital signature that shows what message is from what person.

We are going to desperately need this, but I’m not sure the market will give a fuck.

Eventually the chance you are ever talking to another human being online in any format will be statistically impossible.