The Great Extinction: How AI is Destroying the Internet

AI assistants are fundamentally reshaping the internet ecosystem by providing direct answers instead of directing users to websites, causing traffic declines for information sources like Wikipedia (23% drop) and Stack Overflow (64% drop). While entertainment platforms and social communities survive by offering emotional content and human interaction, the shift creates a monopoly on information access and threatens the diversity of knowledge sources. This creates a paradox where AI weakens the very sources it learned from, potentially leading to content degradation and the transformation of the internet from a global library into an amusement park dominated by a few AI giants.