Essay warns AI-generated content could extend from a dead internet into a bot-driven dead economy

The article argues that the web is increasingly filled with machine-generated content made for bots rather than people, extending the “dead internet theory” into a broader dead economy theory. It points to massive AI infrastructure spending by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and others as a warning sign that the industry’s financial expectations may be detached from real human demand.

The piece frames AI not just as a media-quality problem but as a potential distortion of economic signals, where automated production and consumption can inflate perceived value. If synthetic activity substitutes for genuine demand, investors and platforms may struggle to distinguish durable markets from self-reinforcing automation loops.

The dead economy theory