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Tangential but I've been wondering recently - what becomes of the internet writ large, if/when we do actually get open-sourced Astra+ level models which any skiddie can plausibly prompt with the Navy Seal copypasta and point at any website or domain of choice? I'm usually firmly on the "nothing ever happens" team which so far is largely bearing out (I'm still employed as a mid-tier IT monkey, even), and continue to think that any significant and un-ignore-able effects of AI on day-to-day real life, or
android catgirlsany "physical" manifestations of said AI, are still years away in the most optimistic case. So far I don't see sufficient reason to consider myself doomed in the short term, and live in a sufficiently old-fashioned shithole that can plausibly endure shutting down all those fancy interwebs of yours throughout without much issue (in fact total cybergulag infra destruction would actually be a positive).Still, recent developments like the HF incident have been pretty instructive, and coupled with my experience working with gov't infra software, significantly tanked my already meager faith in the ability of pre-AI domains and software to withstand future centaur attackers (I'm not even sure if rampant vibe-coding is meaningfully less safe than "manual" spaghetti of yore in some cases). And I wonder, how does the post-open-source-AGI internet even look like in such a world? Wild West Web 2.0, where you never know which link might give your computer incurable AIDS today? Glorious RETVRN to fido/usenet/etc? Literal fucking Blackwalls cleaving apart pre-AI and post-AI interwebs, for the countries that have the capability and (more importantly) foresight to build one? Global internet splintering into insular country-wide intranets, with govt-sanctioned throttled glowing gateways to the infested formerly-global domains? Status quo unchanged because with AGI perfect defense is actually possible, give or take the cloying aftertaste of globohomo creeping into every domain (you need cutting-edge stuff after all, better make sure Claude 9 Talmud consents to your use case)?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Predicting what will happen is tough but I could see a couple things happening.
Cloudflare maximalism. One thing that's changed post ChatGPT is that nearly every website is now behind CloudFlare. This reduces automated traffic a lot (at the expense of a single point of failure). We might take the next step and give Cloudflare or a company like it control of the server architecture too so that my server is running on a known secure architecture that is regularly patched. No more just standing up a LAMP stack on Amazon.
A new internet protocol using some cryptographically secure identify verification with payment. So if I want to visit themotte.org, my account will be charged like $0.0001 per request, possibly handled at the DNS layer. Of course people have been proposing this for email for ages and it never happened.
We're probably going to stay on our current course until some big financial institution gets hacked.
http://shirky.com/essays/the-case-against-micropayments/
Slow lane: PoW, Cloudflare, etc.
Fast lane: micropayments
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Oh, I'm fully aware of the many reasons that micropayments have failed to get traction. It would have to be handled at the DNS layer or something and bundled through on your internet bill. Anything that asks users to pay a separate bill is going to fail.
What's different now is that we might have a forcing function when there are hacks that carry a significant price tag.
But yeah, it might be such a hard nut to crack that the internet just doesn't work anymore. My confidence in all of this is low, and despite everything, I rate "nothing happens" as most likely.
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The usual arguments for the platform-ization of the Internet focus on social network effects and corporate centralization. Your argument has me wondering if there's another element of security that's been ignored. The big platforms can afford security professionals; my basic personal site is more likely to be running an unpatched (who has time for prompt patching) WordPress with an expired SSL cert. Let's Encrypt is finally a free option, but is going to start issuing 45-day certs by 2028.
Beyond that, the desire for a public web presence seems to have wanted over time. I don't want to be internet-famous. IMO the "I don't post anymore" problem is evidence that whatever effort the platforms put into "trust and safety" doesn't seem to have delivered either. But I do miss those naive times some days.
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