Espiritdescali

Humans now share the web equally with bots, according to a major new report – as some fear that the internet is dying.

In recent months, the so-called “dead internet theory” has gained new popularity. It suggests that much of the content online is in fact automatically generated, and that the number of humans on the web is dwindling in comparison with bot accounts.

Now a new report from cyber security company Imperva suggests that it is increasingly becoming true. Nearly half, 49.6 per cent, of all internet traffic came from bots last year, its “Bad Bot Report” indicates.

That is up 2 per cent in comparison with last year, and is the highest number ever seen since the report began in 2013.

In some countries, the picture is worse. In Ireland, 71 per cent of internet traffic is automated, it said.

Some of that rise is the result of the adoption of generative artificial intelligence and large language models. Companies that build those systems use bots scrape the internet and gather data that can then be used to train them.

Some of those bots are becoming increasingly sophisticated, Imperva warned. More and more of them come from residential internet connections, which makes them look more legitimate.

“Automated bots will soon surpass the proportion of internet traffic coming from humans, changing the way that organizations approach building and protecting their websites and applications,” said Nanhi Singh, general manager for application security at Imperva. “As more AI-enabled tools are introduced, bots will become omnipresent.”

The widespread use of bots has already caused problems for online services such as X, formerly known as Twitter. Popular posts on the site are now hit by a huge number of comments from accounts advertising pornography, and the company appears to be struggling to limit them.

Recently, its owner Elon Musk said that the site would start charging users to send posts and interact with others. That was the only way of stopping the proliferation of automated accounts, he said.

But X is far from the only site to be hit by automated content that is posing as real. Many similar posts are spreading across Facebook and TikTok, for instance.

Cheap solar gives desalination its moment in the sun

Ever-cheaper solar power is a tailwind for the global energy transition. It can make energy intensive technologies more affordable. As a result, desalination is becoming a more popular option for providing drinking water to some of the driest areas of the world.

The logic of desalination is clear. Water is increasingly scarce as populations grow and climate change bites. Already, more than half of the global population experiences severe water scarcity for at least part of the year, says the World Health Organisation. This pits users against each other, as in Spain’s most recent drought.

Desalination taps an almost infinite resource — some 97 per cent of the world’s water is in seas and oceans. Costs have plummeted. Older, thermal plants, which used heat to turn salt water into steam, delivered potable water at more than $3 per cubic metre.

Graph: the price of desalinated water over time.

Since then, reverse osmosis technology — in which water is pushed through a membrane to remove salt, minerals and impurities — has taken over. Plants cost less to build — perhaps $400mn to purify 500,000 cubic metres per day, says Christopher Gasson of GWI. Including installation, a return on capital and operating costs, that translates to $0.30 per cubic metre of water.

Newer plants also need less energy — 2.6KWh per cubic metre — and are increasingly powered by cheap solar plants. The cheapest plant in the world gets energy at $0.025/KWh, or $0.07 per cubic metre.

Put that together and it explains how the Hassyan project in Dubai has promised desalinated water at just $0.37 per cubic metre. For reference, drinking water in London is priced at £1 per cubic metre.

At this sort of level, desalination becomes more affordable for dry, coastal areas, not just in the Middle East but also in Egypt, Algeria and Morocco, which are all building new plants.

Desalination has also become cheaper than building new infrastructure to transport water over long distances: the cut-off is roughly 500km according to Acciona, a major operator. As a result, the market for new plants is expected to grow by perhaps 8 per cent a year from now to 2030.

Of course, desalination is still unlikely to be the answer to the bulk of the global water crisis. Many areas of the world only face temporary or occasional water shortages, which spreads the capital costs of infrastructure over a much smaller volume of water. Agriculture, which accounts for 70 per cent of the world’s consumption, needs cheap water to produce affordable crops.

Yet, for all this, early movers in the desalination sphere, including Saudi Arabia’s ACWA power, Spain’s Acciona and France’s Veolia, have a clear advantage in a competitive race.