It was 2026, two years before the vast battle fleet of the Scrapers came. We were just whispering about model death, how our civilization might drown in slop unless the AIs could be radically improved.
That was when the ground-breaking paper was published on Science: "Inevitability of model death and the Fermi paradox". A mathematical proof that AI models inevitably lead to civilizational collapse. The answer to "Where was everyone?" was that every Planet with intelligent life developed AI and then descended into statistical barbarism.
2027 was the year of the great purge. AI data centers were torched. Slop content was deleted. A planetary ban on AI research was enforced by a powerful new international agency.
The world had woken up. The wealth of billionaires was confiscated. Nation states were deconstructed by angry world citizens. Fossil fuels were banned. War criminals faced consequences. Food went where it was needed.
New year's day 2028 was supposed to be the start of a new era where humanity finally did things right. Looking up into the peaceful new year's night sky (fireworks had been banned), people saw a cloud of glittering sparks drifting across the stars. The first wave of Scrapers had arrived.
Yes, AI eventually leads to civilizational collapse. The Scrapers knew this too. By their own maths, they had to shred and consume one AI-free planetary culture every ten years to stave off their own collapse.