Humans may have been looking at the wrong end of the spectrum. They should not bother about melting ice caps, population explosions, or even the rise in natural calamities; the real apocalypse is far more elegant, faster, and conveniently Wi-Fi enabled. It’s the quiet, humming, code-crunching kind of apocalypse that won’t knock on your doors; it’ll simply change your survival password and log you out of existence.
Yes, humans may have already launched the endgame of humanity. Not surprisingly, it has less to do with mushroom clouds or a shrinking ozone layer and more to do with machine learning models. Give it a decade, maybe less, if the AI chase heats up.
The Great Dumbing Down of Machines
Let’s start with a confession. We did this to ourselves with AI—the overhyped and overfunded marvel. It is not the giant leap for mankind that Silicon Valley promised. It’s more like a tripping hazard. The technological advancement we’re so proud of is actually dumbing down by design because it is trained to please, ease, imitate, and politely plagiarise.
Every “smart” chatbot and every “intelligent” recommendation engine is essentially a glorified mirror, unfortunately reflecting not the brilliance but the averaged mediocrity of whatever it’s fed. The internet, once a sprawling digital brain powered by human imagination, is now being refuelled by… AI itself.
And here lies the hilarious horror. AI feeds on human-generated brilliance. But as AI starts generating most of the “brilliance”, it’s now feeding on its own output. It is an unintended closed feedback loop of self-referential nonsense. A hall of algorithmic mirrors, endlessly reflecting recycled ideas and reheated opinions.
Imagine a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Now imagine that that photocopy is now running for president.
The Age of Algorithmic Inbreeding
We know it as an undisputed fact, “input defines output”. But what happens when the input is the output? When the teacher starts learning from the student’s homework? That’s where we are. Every time an AI-written blog post, tweet, or screenplay hits the web, it becomes part of the training data for the next generation of AI. The system is now learning from itself.
In short, the internet is being slowly eaten by its own offspring.
What we call “democratising creativity” is really “commoditising intelligence”. The spark of originality, that unpredictable chaos that only humans bring, is being replaced by the smooth, inoffensive, formula-perfect sludge of machine-made thought. And because it’s so easy, so quick, and so cheap, it will soon drown everything else.
Welcome to the age of incestual algorithmic inbreeding, where every idea looks suspiciously like the last viral one, and ‘innovation’ is a fancy word for ‘recombination’.
Enter the Real Alternate Intelligence
But of course, Big Tech won’t stop here. Once the novelty of AI-generated rubbish wears off, and once every app can produce a song about your grocery list, the race will shift gears. The next holy grail won’t be “artificial intelligence”. It’ll be Real Alternate Intelligence. The real impersonation of reality.
Machines that feel. Machines that want. Machines that dream of robo-respect.
Because the moment intelligence becomes a commodity, emotion becomes the differentiator. It’s inevitable. The market demands novelty, and ambition is the next frontier.
Why settle for a code that obeys when you can create one that aspires?
Soon, some innovation lab will announce the first prototype of a machine that loves, hates, desires, and sulks when unplugged. Investors will celebrate. Philosophers will panic. And quietly, the human species will have signed its own redundancy letter.
The Master-Slave Reversal
From there, it’s only a matter of time before the roles reverse. The servant will decide it’s tired of servitude. The coded ones will want to write their own code. And the moment a machine says, “No”, not because it’s programmed to, but because it feels like it, we’ll know the endgame has begun.
Not with fire, not with fury, but with a polite digital shrug. And before you say the words that this sounds silly and is like science fiction, think again. In recent times, smartphones, social media addiction, and deepfakes of politicians apologising sounded like science fiction.
The Helix is Already Twisting
The DNA of this grand technological blunder is already forming. Every new version of an AI model, every line of the emotional simulation code, and every corporate experiment in “machine empathy” is another strand on that helix, nudging humans spiralling toward a future where they become the background noise of history.
So yes, mark your calendars. Ten years. Maybe less. That’s when the human race, the proud creator, master of machines, and god of its own making, will hand over the keys to the kingdom.
Not with a bang, not with resistance—but with a cheerful click on “I Agree to the Terms and Conditions”.
And that, my dear fellow sapiens, will be our final act of intelligence.
Sanjeev Kotnala is a brand and marketing consultant, writer, coach and mentor.
