The Internet is Dead

long live the internet

One of the things I do in my day job is to work with technologists on AI. I have really one overarching goal with this: to figure out how to use AI for good in education.

So this means I think a lot about what’s happening with AI. And, being a philosopher at heart, I can’t help but think about it philosophically.

One of the things I’ve been wondering about is a theory called “dead internet theory.” This is the idea that the internet is mostly just the internet replicating itself with AI. There’s very little that is original in the majority of internet content.

And, with the increasing sophistication of AI tools, our ability to rely on digital content is rapidly diminishing. It is very difficult to tell if images, videos and text have been produced by humans or bots.

So where does this leave us, philosophically speaking?

To answer this, I will turn to the philosophy of mind/consciousness that you encounter in Trika Shaivism, from 11th century Kashmir.

Embodied Minds

One relevant question, I t…