It's the last Monday of the year, and if I reckon correctly, only second Monday since spring that we don't have a weekly meeting in #ai-contrib channel of Drupal Slack. Previous one was when I was traveling towards DrupalCon Vienna,
so maybe it doesn't count :)
What counts is that it's Monday, and I have some time to look back at the year 2025. Finally!
Things seem right from afar
In the world where positive news is a rear find, it's easy to get frustrated. War in the middle of Europe, climate change, permanent conflicts between politicians, greedy corporations,
and as a cherry on the top, existential question
Will human software developers (me included) be replaced by machines?
Well, this did not happen this year, and I see no signs of this happening in 2026
Our understanding of AI has changed, and it's interesting to watch the trends.
From a "big unknown" in 2023, "kids game" in 2024, and an existential threat in the beginning of 2025, AI has transformed into enabler that we probably haven't experienced yet. Not a replacement, but a very powerful tool.
As many other powerful tools, AI is disruptive. It has already affected the way people consume information - skipping search engines and websites themselves, only reading the summaries that are available on ChatGPT and its analogues.
This year, we have learned to build web sites so that they are easily consumed by AI. So the bot traffic (the Internet for bots) is growing.
What about us, humans?
Social networks, designed for communication and sharing positive emotions, have become a toxic mix of advertising (frighteningly context-aware!), meaningless AI-generated content from unknown and unwanted sources. And since when it is normal to not be able to finish the reading when I clicked the post?
No wonder people are quitting social media.
So here is my resolution
Next year, let's focus not only on feeding the robots, but on rebuilding the web for people.
Where people use the bots but are now owned by them.
Where people but not bots decide who they share their posts with, and who do they want to follow.
Where people but not bots form their opinions.
We have the tools, let's use them for a good purpose.
Happy New Year!