I am wondering what will come to save us from this AI storm. It looks like online search and social networks will be more or less dead. Maybe we will start going out again.
I see stories that the market is already starting to doubt the hype. Integrating AI into existing workflows or replacing those workflows is often more complex and error-prone than simply having human beings do the thing, and the cost benefit analysis isn't there because the technology just doesn't live up to expectations. So there may be hope.
That is the eventual outcome. The question is how much havoc so-called "tech" companies can wreak before we get there. They have lots of money to burn. This could take a while. The environmental costs are enormous.
We are now at the "They have copied all our output, chopped it into tokens and are regurgitating it back to us" stage.
The internet is more than the web. Perhaps the web must be sacrificed to free ourselves from these cretinous intermediaries.