Corpses Feeding Corpses: A Love Letter to the Dead Internet

To be able to read this post you need to have one certain skill:

to hold two thoughts in your head at the same time.

I know it's a lot to ask… most people can't. But at least try, or practice and then come back. Or you can read this slow, several times.

There is this theory about the internet, the dead internet theory. Usually I don't fall for most conspiracy theories but this one is probably not a theory anymore. The internet is flooding with AI slop, SEO spam, Reddit arguments, corporate marketing, and people repeating each other. I mean is there anyone here anymore really!? This is not new, this has been going on for a loooong time

So with that in mind, what data is LLMs (you might call it AI) actually based on? What is Claude's and ChatGPT's data actually based on? Yeah that's right, the dead internet. It's feeding on corpses. And when you train the next generation of models on content that's already half AI-generated? You're feeding corpses to corpses.

Now I said you needed to be able to have two thoughts in your head and you might wonder where is the other thought? It's coming right now. I want you to understand that I'm not saying "AI" is bad and we should all stop NOW. I'm not saying that and I don't think that. I think it's a useful tool that is changing a lot in our society, especially for me as a developer. Personally it's been a great tool to speed up my work since I either develop a lot alone or I have a full team of interns to keep track of. But I'm a senior developer.

Claude, which I use, doesn't run me - I run Claude. Claude is just like a very bad junior developer kinda, or let me put it like this: - Claude is a junior developer that can execute certain tasks and is a syntax freak but who is not so good at context and user experience.

So I'm not saying we should all stop and this is bad. Keep that thought in your mind as we move on.

Now think about this question:

Have you ever felt or thought that "wow AI can really do this cool thing" and actually thought what it did was completely new, innovative or creative?

I'm not sure everyone is actually aware of it but I do believe a lot of people have felt that. But I'm sorry to disappoint you, "AI" can't be innovative, creative or come up with something completely new. Humans can, not most of us, but some of us can actually do that. It is an extraordinary human gift to be able to do that. It's genius. But most of us are not geniuses we are regular people who can use what already exists and merge it together into stuff that feel and seems new. We do that by adding our own human creativity and touch. We do not get our only source of truth from the internet. Our source of truth is based on real experience.

But "AI" can't do what we do. "AI" only has the source of truth in the dead internet, their source of truth is already a corpse. It is also stuck in patterns (we all know "AI" looooves patterns…) and biased crap.

Is this the future we want? An even more dead internet? Or even worse, that we die with it. Not in a real sense but our human touch dying with it? Our thoughts, creativity, intuition, playfulness? The heart and soul of what it means to be human?

What I'm saying is this: every generated post, every auto-completed thought, every piece of content you didn't actually create yourself, every piece of code you where not a part of creating - that's more corpses feeding corpses.

Remember, AI is a tool for your journey, not a substitute for the power of your own mind. It should serve you, not dictate your actions. You run the AI, or the AI runs you. Don't let it replace your creativity, your intuition, your weird human insights that come from actually living in the world.