With the exception of Israel, sub-Saharan Africa, and a few other spots, worldwide fertility rates are low and falling. And one viral economic analysis published this month suggests that smartphones are driving the decline. What will the world be like if the number of humans shrinks as a regular and ongoing trend?
That is only half of the equation I’m interested in. Technology may or may not be driving the fertility decline, but it will certainly define our experience of it. As humans dwindle, artificial intelligence is becoming more prevalent. Even if we cannot count the number of individual AI systems out there, it is like having “tens of millions of geniuses” on the scene—as the technology is often described—and the number will eventually run into the billions. In other words, the ratio of AIs to humans is rising rapidly. Imagine, for instance, a world in which countries have a fraction of their current populations and continue to shrink, yet there are billions of AI agents.
The first and most obvious result is that the relative financial returns to being human will go up. Humans still will be needed for many jobs, especially if those jobs require manipulation of the physical world in complex or idiosyncratic ways, or if they require the expression of human charisma and persuasion. Entrepreneurs, entertainers, politicians, and gatherers of original data are still likely to be humans.
