Veteran ML practitioner says AI has shattered her 20-year mental model of the internet

On November 3, veteran ML practitioner Vicki Boykis posted a series of messages expressing deep anxiety about AI's impact on the internet ecosystem. What truly frightens her isn't doomsday scenarios like "the heat death of the universe via AGI," but something far more concrete: her twenty-year-old mental model of how the internet works and how products are built has completely collapsed, and nothing new and concrete has emerged to replace it.

Confirmed

• Boykis contrasted the old and new worlds: the internet used to be human-centered, with products designed for people, good code that humans could read and reason about, and quality products rewarded over time. She fears the new world will be "largely cold and agentic," with content, code, and products built to serve agents rather than humans.
• She said Reddit — one of her most important information sources — already has roughly 80% bot replies in comment sections, and the same is true on X. She publicly questioned where Sam Altman and Dario Amodei stand on this.
• She criticized Dario Amodei for still talking about "paperclip"-style AGI risk narratives while these real-world problems are already unfolding.

Why it matters

• This is a subjective observation from a seasoned frontline practitioner rather than measured data, but it strikes at two core issues of the AI-era internet: the collapse of trust as information sources get polluted by machine-generated content, and whether traditional product methodology and engineering experience still hold when the target users of products and code shift from humans to agents.
• The "80% bot replies" figure is a personal estimate not verified by any platform, but the claim resonated widely in the community, sparking broad discussion about the information ecosystem and an agentic future.

2026-11-03 ~ 2026-11-03 · 5 related posts

• [source] Vicki Boykis: my 20-year mental model of building products on the internet collapsed — vboykis · 2026-11-03
• [source] vboykis warns the internet is turning cold and agentic, built for bots over people — vboykis · 2026-11-03
• vboykis: Reddit, one of my key information sources, is now 80% bots — vboykis · 2026-11-03
• [source] "Reddit is now 80% bots": dev laments AI-driven collapse of information ecosystems — vboykis · 2026-11-03

1 near-duplicate retellings: vboykis