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Posted on 10/12/2025 12:33:37 PM PDT by Openurmind
Artificial Intelligence is no longer a futuristic buzzword — it’s an everyday business tool. From generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot to machine learning models powering real-time analytics, customer service, and cybersecurity, AI has gone mainstream.
But while most of the conversation has focused on data privacy, automation, and ethics, there’s another massive shift underway: AI is transforming the way we use the internet.
As organizations across every industry embrace AI on a scale, they’re also encountering a new challenge: exponential growth in data transfer, processing requirements, and bandwidth demand. This is not a theoretical problem — it’s already happening. And IT leaders must start preparing now.
AI doesn’t just require computing power — it demands consistent, high-volume connectivity. Whether you’re using a generative model for content creation or deploying real-time fraud detection tools, AI workloads are data-intensive by nature.
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Anyone else experiencing slow speeds? Having websites go down? AI is now universally overloading website host and internet Bandwidth capacity. No matter how much they build it will still never keep up. This is going to just get much worse. Website owners and internet users are suffering already to make sure everyone else has their digital toy. The worst is that AI bots are crawling and scraping sites so fast, so often, and in so many numbers that it locks them up like a DDoS attack. And those domains who are charged by the amount of bandwidth they use a month by their hosts are paying extra out the nose so that the rest of the world can play with their toys. It is completely unsustainable... It is going to kill the internet as we know it.
I am finding that sometimes my speed is no faster that Dialup was. And I am constantly battling it on a domain to keep it from killing it. It is time to have discussions about some serious self defense from this bandwidth theft monstrosity. Time to hold hosts and AI providers accountable for this very negative situation. The rest of the internet should not suffer and sacrifice so that these few MegaTech Corporations can profit.
“customer service”
Ha! Has anybody gotten anything close to a useful response from customer service AI? In my experience, it is useless. Verizon openly brags about its AI customer service, but it is the worst.
As for banks, I still get AI responses like “I can do things like tell you your balance or your last check that cleared.” Useless!
This is all very true, but creative people come up with solutions that alleviate the problem of high data usage. I am currently putting together a very inexpensive system capable of running Ollama and running open source AI models and serving them to other computers in our network. This will work even when our connection is down. Of course when connected it will be able serve over the internet as well.
AI is very scalable and does not have to be in the corporate image that most people imagine.
AI is like a gun. It is a wonderful tool if it it aimed away from you. If it is aimed at you, expect to get hurt.
HeadquartersTurns out an address check shows "Suite 100" at that address to be:
9200 E. Mineral Ave Suite 100
Centennial, CO 80112
Thrive Workplace - Centennial -- 9200 E Mineral Ave STE 100, Centennial, CO 80112As to the site:
"GCF creates a positive environment where employees, consultants and suppliers to give back to the community and help those struggling with homelessness, abuse, natural disasters and hardship."Sounds like they broker mostly online between supplier and end customer, a middleman of sorts. And they care.
But this bandwidth load on Webhosts, websites, and the internet infrastructure is a very serious problem. I am absolutely sure they are trying to destroy the internet as we know it now and completely replace it with their AI services and information control. This is going to absolutely rape the hosting business and independent hosting and independent information sources.
Websites are dropping like flies because they just cannot handle the bandwidth load. And oddly enough there are no hosts helping their customers with filters to block this huge demand from AI constantly stealing data from their databases. The only tool available right now is CloudFlare. How convenient for CloudFlare right? The #1 content censoring tool in the industry...
When before we had just a couple dozen webcrawler bots to deal with, now we have millions maybe billions hitting our databases because now every individual can become a webcrawler using AI... It is unsustainable...
Again, source aside... What they say here is ABSOLUTE FACT and cannot be discounted! In fact it took down my own domain last month and a friends domain at around the same time, And that was also just within days later the FR went down. DDoS attacks are chicken feed compared to what this AI demand is. I am going to make an educated speculation that the FR was overloaded because AI was scraping the database. It acts just like a serious DDoS attack.
Is this a problem for low-ranked websites?
Don't most AIs spider only higher ranked sites, like Wikipedia?
Whenever I ask Grok a question, it seems Grok only checks a few sites. A few dozen for more esoteric questions. But always, only the popular, higher ranked sites.
We heard the same things with web crawlers way back when. We heard the same things when YouTube, Napster, and porno started. We heard the same thing with Netflix streaming we heard when everyone went to streaming. We are hearing it now with AI. I’m pretty sure capitalists will solve this issue. I have faster internet on my cell phone then I was ever able to get with cable. There are 8500 starling satellites already. I would expect more fear so governments can crack down harder on internet access since they are failing at content.
As to the FR hiatus, I expect the Robinsons would be the ones to query as to whether it was technical, a DDoS or other.
As I eschew all AI related things, I simply do run into what others seem to be experiencing. Time will surely tell.
AI the new virus that feeds on the world
Agree completely - I folded an informational website recently that had been online for over twenty years. The bots utterly destroyed bandwidth and database connection limits on a regular basis. They weren’t the only reason, but they were the deciding factor.
Bfl
Starlink 3 will do it.
Grok:
Starlink Version 3 (V3) refers to the next-generation satellites in SpaceX’s satellite internet constellation, designed for significantly higher capacity and performance compared to earlier versions like V2 Mini. These satellites are larger and more advanced, with deployments planned via Starship launches starting in 2025.
Key Speed Specifications
Downlink Capacity: Up to 1 Tbps (1,000 Gbps) per satellite, representing over 10x the capacity of previous generations.
Uplink Capacity: Up to 160 Gbps per satellite, about 24x the uplink of prior versions.
Latency: Expected to be under 20 ms, thanks to low Earth orbit and improved laser inter-satellite links that are 40% faster than fiber optics.
I use cloudflare to protect my site from bots.
What you say is all true. I mostly use Perplexity.ai Pro which has been provided free for a year since I have 5-year-old Samsung phone. I run perplexity using mostly the Grok4 model. When I ask it to do a comparison between two products. It checks dozens of websites before posting its conclusion back to me. It often makes mistakes that are easily refutable, when I point them out it checks dozens more websites to verify.
I imagine that the service uses far more bandwidth than Google ever thought about. Still, I have a business hosting account with Hostinger that I paid upfront for 4 years at $3 a month. It has 200GB of storage space and I can host up to 100 websites with it, and it has unlimited bandwidth. So a site hosted with that host this type of downloading activity makes no difference.
On the other hand, I also host websites locally and if they started getting a lot of requests for pictures and video that I have up... this could cause problems. It depends on how things are setup. But I understand your concerns. My nextdoor neighbor is a software engineer for Amazon. This sounds like an interesting topic of discussion.
Here is what Grok has to say in its own defense:
“The growth of AI services is indeed straining internet infrastructure through massive increases in data center power demands, bandwidth requirements, and overall network traffic, but experts do not predict an imminent “implosion” of the entire system; instead, it’s leading to targeted investments, innovations, and policy responses to enhance capacity and resilience. While challenges like grid overloads and bandwidth surges are real, the internet’s distributed architecture and ongoing expansions make total collapse unlikely in the foreseeable future.[1][2][3][4][5]
## Current Infrastructure Strain
AI workloads are driving unprecedented demand for data centers, with global spending projected to reach $371 billion in 2025, a 44% year-over-year increase, primarily for computing resources that consume vast amounts of electricity equivalent to powering five million homes. This has caused grid stress in key regions, including harmonic distortions, load warnings, and seven-year waits for grid connections, as AI data centers create concentrated 24/7 power loads that challenge existing utility infrastructure. Bandwidth demands are also soaring, with data center interconnects expected to grow at least 6X over the next five years due to AI’s need for rapid data movement between facilities, leading to a 330% surge in overall data center bandwidth as of mid-2025.[2][3][6][5][7][1]
## Future Projections
By 2030, AI could double global internet traffic strain, but projections show data center capacity expanding 33% annually to meet this, potentially reaching 92 GW by 2027 with a 17% CAGR, though downside scenarios adjust to 14% if AI adoption slows. The “dead internet theory” highlights risks from bot-generated content (now 51% of traffic), potentially flooding networks with synthetic data and eroding trust, but this is more a content quality issue than a structural failure. While some warn of an AI bubble bursting like the dot-com crash due to overinvestment, historical parallels suggest growth will stabilize rather than implode the system, with AI reshaping rather than destroying infrastructure.[8][6][9][10][11][12][13]
## Mitigation Efforts
Industry leaders are responding with $1 trillion in 2025 AI infrastructure investments, including doubling colocation capacity, deploying 800 Gb/s fiber optics, and exploring decentralized AI models to reduce latency and central loads. Power solutions involve nuclear restarts, renewables, and AI-optimized grid management, while networking firms like Ciena and Equinix are building resilient, metro-based facilities to handle AI’s real-time demands without widespread outages. Policy measures, such as U.S. government incentives for energy-efficient data centers and international standards for AI ethics, aim to prevent collapse by fostering sustainable expansion.[14][15][3][4][16][17][13][2]
[1](https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/power-and-utilities/data-center-infrastructure-artificial-intelligence.html)
[2](https://broadbandbreakfast.com/resiliency-becomes-watchword-as-ai-strains-u-s-infrastructure/)
[3](https://www.ciena.com/about/newsroom/press-releases/global-survey-explores-networking-needs-for-ai-era)
[4](https://newsroom.cisco.com/c/r/newsroom/en/us/a/y2025/m06/cisco-research-a-major-infrastructure-shift-is-underway-ai-could-double-the-strain-or-solve-it.html)
[5](https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/networking/data-center-bandwidth-soars-330-driven-by-ai-demand)
[6](https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/articles/how-ai-is-transforming-data-centers-and-ramping-up-power-demand)
[7](https://blog.zones.com/impact-of-ai-adoption-on-it-infrastructure-in-2025)
[8](https://www.galaxy.com/insights/perspectives/dead-internet-theory-collapse-online-truth)
[9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory)
[10](https://www.derekthompson.org/p/this-is-how-the-ai-bubble-will-pop)
[11](https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-telecommunications/our-insights/ai-power-expanding-data-center-capacity-to-meet-growing-demand)
[12](https://fortune.com/2025/09/28/ai-dot-com-bubble-parallels-history-explained-companies-revenue-infrastructure/)
[13](https://research.contrary.com/deep-dive/the-economics-of-ai-build-out)
[14](https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/news-insights/research/2025/10/ai-infrastructure-midyear-2025-update-and-future-technology-considerations)
[15](https://www.ifminvestors.com/news-and-insights/thought-leadership/ai-at-a-crossroads/)
[16](https://empirixpartners.com/the-trillion-dollar-horizon/)
[17](https://blog.equinix.com/blog/2025/01/08/how-ai-is-influencing-data-center-infrastructure-trends-in-2025/)
[18](https://www.flexential.com/resources/report/2025-state-ai-infrastructure)
[19](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1gtdfno/ai_will_destroy_the_internet_sooner_than_we_expect/)
[20](https://aimagazine.com/articles/how-ai-will-continue-to-impact-the-data-centre-industry)”
Yes, from Wal-Mart. The first one was obviously AI but then it sent me to a “person” who was more sophisticated, but still, not a person. A very maddening experience, I now understand how folks have been driven insane, by it. HOWEVER, I ordered $50 worth of ginger ale to get the free delivery, for a disabled family member, who can’t shop for herself. They only delivered half, so I wanted either the balance,or credit. They ended up giving me the two cases that were delivered for no charge.
I considered that to be a favorable outcome.
Except for going to a few sites I have found that the internet is becoming more useless than not.
Searches are terrible.
The Internet as we know it is going away.
The response from Grok itself is an example which highlights bandwidth usage. It listed 20 of the sites that it used as reference, but there were obviously many more checked out. Most of these were likely already cached because the response was quick, but it makes you realize the huge amount of resources that are tapped to come up with conclusions.
That’s a great outcome!
I was on hold with Verizon last week. We switched three lines from T-Mobile to Verizon because the T-Mobile phone call quality was so bad. I randomly get a message on my son’s line “You can’t leave a voicemail message because person has not set up voicemail yet.” Yet, other times, I can leave a message just fine. It’s maddening. The robot / AI customer service put me through THREE minutes of blah-blah-blah hell (your call is important, use our fantastic AI system, call may be used for training, our AI system is amazing!, blah blah blah) then said “your estimated wait time is 7 minutes.” I hung up after 30 minutes. Never go an answer.
Worst customer support ever! Contrast Capital One Bank and Quicken where you get a human very quickly and that person speaks American English!
Verizon should give us a month free service for the hell they drag us through.
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