Ask HN: What are your predictions for the Internet in 2-5 years?

[cl42]

Will AI-generated content destroy the web? Will Search Generative Experiences (SGE) replace the need for organic content? Will closed communities and curated directories become a thing? Will mixed reality somehow save the day?

I'm curious what folks consider the definite (i.e., well defined, concrete) future state to be... Or what would you forecast?

[meristohm]

The internet is only as important as what we make it, but abstraction layers don't directly provide shelter or food, and while real human connection can be found online, most of still really like a hug sometimes.

At this point (I'm in my 40s, grew up with computers starting with the Commodore 64) I'd be okay switching/progressing to the internet not being so prominent. As a parent of a child with disabilities, the internet has made communication around medical needs easier, both with doctors and with other people in similar situations. On a global scale, beyond my family though? This speed at scale may be doing more harm than good to life on earth.

We're already planning to move back to a city (mainly for our child's benefit), and we'd never have left if the internet didn't exist.

"Definite future state" - hah, not even gonna bother with that one.

As for the rest? Passing fads, but also reflective of human social nature; we will always find ways to entertain ourselves. A more interesting question to me is what life on earth might look like in ten thousand years, and what role we now can play in shaping it in such a way that a person then, having grown up with stories about "pocket monoliths" that contained all the stories in the world, might with their rich imagination dream up this thread and chuckle as they go about picking berries (but not all the berries), weaving baskets, catching fish (but not all the fish), and all the other healthy* lifeways that have served us well for so long.

*Yes, I'm including violence in there, too (we're territorial animals at heart), just not the mechanized, industrialized violence that took off in the early 1900s

[cl42 → meristohm]

This is a beautiful answer. You're right to point out the need for social connection, entertainment, play, etc. and how these are all critical aspects of human life. "We'll always find ways to entertain ourselves."

Your child is very lucky to have a thoughtful parent like you. Good luck with the move.

[bjourne]

Fifth generation of online porn. The first was photos, the second clips, the third tube sites, and the fourth cam sites. What the fifth generation will bring I have no idea. I suspect it will have something to do with furries and AI.

[dec0dedab0de]

I hope the flood of AI generated content makes people finally learn to distrust everything online and we all return to the real world.

[cl42 → dec0dedab0de]

Do you think we'll return to human-curated directories?

[warrenm → cl42]

This is an interesting idea .. but then you are left with "how much do you trust the [human] vs how much do you trust the [algorithm]"

[thfuran → dec0dedab0de]

I don't think sewing widespread distrust is at all a good thing.

[interbased → thfuran]

I think it’s more of a skeptical mentality than a distrust. Don’t believe anything at face value kind of thing.

[CM30]

Well, we're already seeing it happen, but I suspect we'll continue to see social media services decline due to the rise of AI and general burnout with the concept. Twitter is on a decline, Facebook is definitely on a decline, Reddit and Discord feel less active than they used to be and people are feeling disheartened with stuff like Instagram too.

I feel like people are going back towards smaller scale communities, or even offline ones in general.

Tech wise, I don't have many predictions though. From what I can tell, the answer there is "more options open up", and that's about it. If you want to work with pure HTML alone, that's still possible and people still do that. If you want to work with Perl or PHP or Python or Ruby or whatever, then that's still possible too. I don't think we'll ever see a total revolution in what tech people use there, because no existing tech completely dies out.

I do worry about the job market here though. We've seen a huge flood of people joining the tech industry due to the salaries and appeal of an 'easy' life, and we're seeing more and more solutions that remove the need for a development team altogether (especially now AI is getting better). I kinda suspect wages are going fall rather rapidly at some point, and that the bottom end of the market might slowly start fading away.

[thiago_fm]

AI-generated content won't change anything, everybody has been using AI to make videos, in post-production, what will change is that there will be "mostly AI generated" content.

Algorithms from Platforms will always filter out content that people don't want to see.

Facebook/Instagram will definitely keep increasing its MAU, but usage will drop and people will focus on higher value entertainment (think Netflix, real life experiences etc).

The fact people tend to use their Tiktoks and reels a lot, it's because they are poor or don't have anything more interesting to do, you'd see people consuming less, but still being active and doing whatever is new and interesting.

The "web" as some tech people perceive it and have nostalgia, like searching through a search engine to get to a page and content has been dead since a long time. Most people don't use that way, they use the internet through their phones and typically directly from Apps.

[seuraughty → thiago_fm]

“Algorithms from Platforms will always filter out content that people don't want to see.”

I wish this were the case, but algos seem to prioritize engagement at the expense of experience. I wish they’d give us more granular control instead of an algo black box secret sauce. I’m increasingly so exhausted that I end up not exploring new context at all.

[AnimalMuppet]

AI generated content is unsatisfying, in some way that I can't define but I experience when I read it. It's like food with no seasoning.

I predict that AI-generated content floods the internet, and that real humans actually use the net less because of it. Nobody wants to spend hours reading that.

[kingofthehills]

no one wants to consume AI generated content, everyone wants to make it. There will have to be something made, either a law or some kind of reverse engineering mechanism to figure out the AI generated content. Otherwise we're gonna be over saturated with information (we already might be). Just think about how many coaches there are in this day and age, with so much information available for free. It's because there is too much information and you can't possibly digest it all. Starting in a new field, where you have 0 experience or have someone to ask for advice is probably the hardest. even harder than it was when I was in school some 20 years ago

[warrenm → kingofthehills]

If by "information" you mean "text" ... I can agree with you

If by "information" you mean "something that might be real" ... I might agree with you

If by "information" you mean "something real that you should pay attention to" ... I MUST disagree

[romerocarlos]

I don't believe AI-generated content will destroy the web, but I do think it will significantly reshape and disrupt the content landscape online in the coming years. The proliferation of AI tools that can generate increasingly sophisticated text, images, video, and more at massive scale and low cost is poised to flood the web with AI-created content.

[krapp → romerocarlos]

>The proliferation of AI tools that can generate increasingly sophisticated text, images, video, and more at massive scale and low cost is poised to flood the web with AI-created content.

This destroys the web.

[Froedlich]

We've had the "Mechanical Turk" version of AI-generated content for two decades; the pay-by-the-word "content farmers" and the spammy sites that use their output.

The main difference between that and "AI" is that we're getting the "AI" promoted as the search results, as opposed to diluting the usefulness of the links.

[retentionissue]

It's already a massive pile of crap and has been for a long time. AI will be a nail in the coffin.

[sanroot99]

I think in future only there would be just raw data, and AI will be able to infer data to create original content.

[warrenm → sanroot99]

There is no "original content" - even human-created material is just fancy happenstance, mindwalking, and Markov-chain-like endeavours

[warrenm]

It will suck as much - but in different ways

[cranberryturkey]

contnet will stop being free due to ai consumption

[warrenm → cranberryturkey]

There is already [effectively] no "free" true content

And it is not "due to ai consumption" - it is due to fewer people being willing to self-sponsor their efforts, and instead relying on aggregation platforms (all of which are for-pay or ad-supported (or both)) to 'get the message out'

[cl42 → cranberryturkey]

Interesting! I wonder if this will be the way we open the door to microtransactions on the web!

[cranberryturkey → cl42]

Nostr is already doing that. Checkout stacker.news. It’s like Reddit but it requires micro payments to post. Commission is split with site owner and content creators.

[siamese_puff → cranberryturkey]

How do you prevent people just paying to push their own agenda and the site being full of biased commercial stuff?

Edit; oh you don’t, this site is full of bitcoin shit.

[cranberryturkey → siamese_puff]

any nostr site is going to be heavily geared towards bitcoiners since the payment system uses lightning network.

[Venkatesh10 → fidla]

Did you create this with AI? Just get outta here

[seuraughty → Venkatesh10]

This was absolutely created with ChatGPT. To be reading AI slop in a thread about the future of the internet is some meta-level awfulness.

I’ve been migrating away from social media forums back to email newsletters just for better content. Feels weird to be saying that.