We will probably have to switch the internet off at some point in the next decade

AI is a lot more than LLM now, and developing fast.

Most businesses will have business continuity plans.

Yes, and they won't involve going back to pen and paper! They'll be alternative/mirrored servers, data back up dumps, etc., - i.e. all computerised and relying on the internet!

Fax machines won't work because they're scrapping the old copper cabled "Pulse" tone telephone network and replacing it with digital/internet telephony. Can you even begin to imagine the cost of manufacturing millions of fax machines etc and the extra staff needed to operate them. It's not as if they were particularly successful - they fulfilled a need at the time, but were problematic and soon disappeared when the internet arrived. People wouldn't be able to work from home without the internet - Teams calls impossible, remote call centres impossible - all rely on the internet.

The genie is well and truly out of the bottle with the internet. It's very naive to think we can turn back the clock.

. There would be plane and train and car crashes as their navigation and signalling systems would be down

I wouldn't assume the internet/GPS etc being turned off would cause inevitably cause aircraft crashes but it would be interesting for a while if it happened suddenly, and long term you certainly wouldn't be able to carry on using airspace as it is used at the moment....

No, humans will do that.

Trust me it can be done ....look it up. Russia control the news this way, its not switching it off but blocking aspects of it, so not much of a stretch to disable the whole thing

I agree with this, and I think this is why they keep older people alive for many years more than they should. To keep treating them, and to keep getting more ££££££. Pumping them full of chemicals and anti-biotics, and all kinds of shite to keep them alive, when some 25+ years ago they would have died of 'natural causes' or a bad heart/heart failure, or a stroke, or an embolism or something, and just shuffled off their mortal coil at say 72, 73, or so.

Now I'm not saying people need to die/should die in their early to mid 70s, and I know some people 75+ and even in their mid- late 80s and even 90s in some cases are living their best life, but they are the exception to the rule. Most people will see their health start to take a rapid decline once they hit their early to mid 70s, because I strongly believe - even in 2026 - that this is the age that most humans should be dying.

It's not normal or moral to keep people alive by pumping shite into them, and giving them a cocktail of meds, to keep them alive. (And even doing surgeries that they may not even need or would have been better off not having...) Seeing all the old people (75-80+) withering away in care homes, with almost zero quality of life (being pumped up with a cocktail of meds to keep them alive, and seeing them just existing) is heartbreaking...

Like the average age of a cat is 15-18 years old, but you do get the odd one living to 20, 22, 25 even, (the occasional one lives to an even older age,) but they are a rarity compared to the ones who live to 15-18, like the people who live to 90-ish are a rarity compared to those who live to mid 70s/roughly 80 at the top end.

Although these days, even vets are trying to get in on the action, trying to get people to spend 5 figure sums on health care/meds/surgeries/ treatment for their cats - and dogs - when they become quite ill, and are close to their natural dying age.. Instead of just euthanising them, they milk the owners for multiple 1000s first! (Not all vets, but some, mainly the ones who have been taken over by big conglomerates.)

I really do believe that a cure for cancer has already been found, and it is NOT chemo and radiotherapy, but as you said, they're not going to reveal it, because of the money they can make from chemo and radiotherapy, and all the surgeries, and meds they can shove into peoples bodies. And the cancer charities make BILLIONS!

I know a number of people who hit 60, and suddenly started getting shit through the post, like appointments for breast screening, over 60s health checks, and fit tests (sending poo to be examined,) and all sorts... Some of them had a tiny bit of blood in their poo, and the first place the GP goes to is 'you may have BOWEL CANCER!!!!!!!' Even though there's a 98% chance it is NOT. In all cases it wasn't. First thing they wanted to was shoved pipes up their arse and down their throat to start wanging it around, potentially doing damage to their bowel and lining of the intestines. (And the soft tissues down their oesophagus.)

Several people refused colonoscopies, and insisted on a scan. They were told the scan 'isn't as good' as it doesn't see as much, but it's because it costs 3 times more than the colonoscopy. One of my friends said 'I'll leave it then, because I'm not having anything shoved up my bum, and have it bashing around inside me.' Colonoscopies can be dangerous, but they don't tell you that!

tl;dr, the medical industry just want to turn people over 60 and people with cancer into experiments. They can fuck off if they ever try to do it to me!

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Turn off the internet 😂😂. My god the stupidity and lack of knowledge of some people is astounding

It’s too late OP. Pandora’s box is opened now. Do you think our adversaries will be willing to put the stopper on AI as well? Ofcourse they won’t.

The big tech bosses have really messed up with this. They should have considered the consequences earlier before it was too late. Now there’s all this talking about halting the advancement of AI because it could be dangerous. There’s no way countries like China will want to do that because they would want to have the advantage over everyone else. We’re f’kd.

Should be easy enough to do!

So how did we manage to survive pre Internet? I agree if the Internet was switched off immediately and completely throughout the world it'd be chaos, but if it was phased over a period of time, I think it could be done. It will never happen though sadly.

Well something has gone wrong with work internet access today for things WFH so struggling to do anything constructive

I think you are misunderstanding how deeply reliant on 'the internet' (connectivity on that scale, anyway) we are globally now. Individuals could certainly go in and visit e.g. their banks, use faxes, etc without accessing a browser or 5G signal from their phone. But if every bit of the system that makes up the internet switched off? The entire banking system, power grid and utilities management, traffic system management, food logistics and transport, etc etc etc are all now running in part or whole via the internet. Everything would grind to a halt and normal life as we know it would stop: you would not be able to go to a bank and get money out in person, because the ledgers keeping track of money would be down. Pretty quickly there would be food shortages as all the logistics systems built to move food around the world would be down. There would be plane and train and car crashes as their navigation and signalling systems would be down. Power grids would fail because their load balancing systems would be down. Even if it happened as a planned, prepared-for act rather than out of the blue, all of these things would require a huge, huge amount of effort to manage without digital connectivity - things would be disrupted for a long time.

😁 If the internet is ever switched off you would have apocalyptic chaos unlike anything you ever ever seen before. We’d go back to the dark ages not some idyllic 1970s fantasy, survival wouldn’t be living off the land flipping through Kays catalogue listening to the radio, it would be unimaginable hardship and societal breakdown on a global scale.

I’ll worry about that happening (turning off the net) when there’s a push for us to go back to using pen and paper and keeping paper records

I wish we could. But it isn’t possible. I think the AI stuff is terrifying though.

@Pedallleur I think the point is that if we ‘switched the internet off’ that would have to be universal and would require us to set up different systems and infrastructure. Of course one individual switching off just their own internet is going to struggle to function in a society where all other individuals and businesses are using the internet.

Even phones are backed by the internet, even brick phones need the internet running the network.

Well yes, but then literally nothing would work - no businesses, no services, no NHS, no police, no security, no public services, no fire service, no trains, no food in the shops. Everything works via the internet these days - everything that relies on communication.

when it's turned off that's your holiday booking gone, Internet banking, food delivery to home gone and supplies to supermarkets disrupted. Back to brick phones. That's just thinking quick. The Internet and its services is in everything. So if you want to live a simple life turn your own phone/router off and try to manage for a month.

I think it's really sad that we are all so reliant on it now for everything.

Christ some of you don’t seem to be able to believe there was civilised sophisticated life before the WWW, or know how it’s changed and been written into everyday life since. We could certainly stand to have a few strands of it rolled back. Any jobs lost will be more than compensated for by the rebirth of the economy and jobs regained from computers…

isn’t that what they tell us about AI? More jobs will be created than lost by change? It would actually be true if some of modern computing was dismantled.

Wait, what? I thought mankind was going to be totally wiped out by AI in six months time? 😆 So who’s going to “turn the internet off?” Perhaps we could leave a message with one of the AI robots?