There's significant confusion around what 'singularity' actually means in AI discourse. Recent claims about achieving singularity often conflate bot-infested digital platforms with genuine artificial superintelligence—two fundamentally different phenomena.

The dead internet theory describes degraded information quality and algorithmic manipulation. True technological singularity, by contrast, refers to a threshold where AI systems surpass human intelligence and potentially operate autonomously across all life domains—essentially creating a scenario where human agency becomes subordinate to machine decision-making.

The distinction matters. Dismissing these concerns as mere platform problems misses the substantive risk framework. Whether through gradual capability expansion or sudden emergence, the relationship between human autonomy and AI development remains the critical variable worth examining.