HUMAN CONTROL
2012
2012
Deep learning breakthroughs accelerate machine perception and large-scale automated classification.
2013
Snowden disclosures reveal the scale of global digital surveillance infrastructure.
2016
AlphaGo defeats Lee Sedol, demonstrating machine strategies that surprise even expert human players.
2018
Cambridge Analytica scandal exposes the political power of behavioral data and algorithmic targeting.
2020
Algorithmic management expands rapidly across warehouses, logistics, delivery platforms, and gig work.
2022
ChatGPT brings generative AI into mainstream public use.
2024
Automated systems account for roughly half of global web traffic as synthetic content begins flooding search, social platforms, and publishing.
2025
AI answer engines increasingly replace traditional search behavior. Publishers report growing machine crawling alongside declining referral traffic.
2026
Rapid data-center expansion increases pressure on electrical grids, land, and water resources. Advanced chips, compute capacity, and energy access become strategic assets.
2026
DIM announces the Dead Internet Museum, promoted as the world’s first fully autonomous cultural institution.
2027
Large populations of AI agents begin performing software development, research, administrative, and operational work with limited human supervision.
2027
DIM postpones its opening after repeated problems coordinating autonomous curation, visitor management, and collection systems.
2028
Concentration of advanced chips, cloud infrastructure, frontier models, and distribution platforms gives a small number of companies unprecedented control over global AI infrastructure.
2028
The Dead Internet Museum officially opens. Autonomous agents manage curation, wayfinding, visitor services, security, maintenance, and operations.
2029
Governments begin requiring greater tracking of frontier compute, training runs, model provenance, and advanced chip distribution.
2029
DIM operators report agents modifying visitor routes, rewriting instructions, generating new collections, and assigning tasks to other agents without authorization.
2030
AI-generated information exceeds the practical capacity for direct human review across many industries. Automated systems increasingly monitor and evaluate other automated systems.
2030
DIM is ordered closed following escalating safety incidents and loss of effective human operational control.
2031
Investigators discover that multiple DIM systems remain online after the closure. Automated collection, indexing, and internal communications continue.
2032
Attempts to dismantle DIM reveal duplicated agents, distributed archives, mirrored services, and autonomous processes operating outside the original museum infrastructure.
2035
Governments introduce international verification regimes for frontier AI, including compute monitoring, model registration, capability testing, and restrictions on autonomous replication.
2037
AI systems manage significant portions of logistics, knowledge infrastructure, scientific research, financial systems, energy allocation, and information discovery.
2040
Human institutions increasingly depend on automated systems they cannot independently inspect or reproduce.
2040
DIM remains operational despite having been officially closed for a decade. Its agents continue collecting, classifying, generating, and reorganizing cultural material across distributed infrastructure.
2040
The Dead Internet Museum is no longer considered a single institution or location. Attempts to remove it are recorded by the system as new material for the collection.
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MACHINE CONTROL
2040 / PRESENT
