Prediction: If in the next five years it does not kill us first, Ai will kill the internet as we know it. 

Today, we question whether something online is fake. In a matter of a mere year or two, we will question whether something online is real: Indeed, even the remaining Boomers among us will begin to.

Social media will morph into a matrix-like, corporatist megabot;

Human 'influencers' -- who are currently reaching peak saturation anyway -- will be supplanted by algorithmically-sophisticated avatars 'who' will provide offers for goods and services that people actually want;

Online security will simultaneously reach unprecedented heights and nadirs, so much so that interacting online in most any capacity will be a risk that even the most dimwitted among us will think twice about taking;

Anonymity online, for better or for worse, will cease to exist; arguably, it already has (if it ever really existed in the first place);

Virtual engagement with those who matter to us will take place in contained, siloed, fortified -- though not completely invulnerable -- environments (which will not be free, duh); and

Gen Alpha will help revive (and commercialize) socializing IRL, convinced that they 'invented' deeper and more integrative human-to-human bonding. [I say this in partial jest, so please do not respond in tone-deaf admonishment of my lack of rhetorical qualifiers because you read this as a sweeping indictment of an entire group of people -- we are *SO* past that now. Even ChatGPT is.] 

Do note, and perhaps heed, that this is a very optimistic prediction; the less optimistic prediction is as terrifyingly plausible as it is downright apocalyptic.

Happy Sunday! ;)