Are we facing tech-stinction?
An Oklahoma tech expert predicted that artificial intelligence will become so omnipresent on the planet that Earth — with a current estimated population of about 8 billion — will have just 100 million people left by the year 2300.
“It’s going to be devastating for society and world society,” Subhash Kak, who teaches computer science at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma, told the Sun. “I think people really don’t have a clue.”
However, the “Age of Artificial Intelligence” author doesn’t think this dystopian future will come about via nuclear war or other “Terminator”-evoking scenarios, but rather through replacing our jobs.
“Computers or robots will never be conscious, but they will be doing literally all that we do because most of what we do in our lives can be replaced,” said Kak.
Currently, techsperts fear that AI is rendering humanity obsolete in every sector, from law to academia and even romance.
As a result, they suggest, birth rates will plunge as people will be hesitant to have kids who are destined to be unemployed, especially given the exorbitant costs of rearing children.
Without people making babies, the global population will suffer an apocalyptic blow, Kak theorized.
“There are demographers who are suggesting that as a consequence, the world population will collapse, and it could go down to as low as just 100 million people on the entire planet Earth in 2300 or 2380,” he warned of the shocking drop.
With only that many people left on the planet — which Kak noted was just over the population of the UK — great metropolises such as London and New York will quickly turn into ghost towns, according to the professor.
“I have all the data in the book. This is not just my personal opinion,” said the computer scientist, who claims this population shrinkflation is happening before our eyes.
“People have stopped having babies. Europe, China, Japan, and the most rapid fall in population right now is taking place in Korea,” Kak declared. “Now, I’m not saying that these trends will continue, but it’s very hard to reverse them because a lot of people have children for a variety of reasons.”
He added, “One is, of course, social. In the back of your mind, you have a sense of what the future is going to be like.”
Kak invoked the warnings of SpaceX’s Elon Musk, who has been quite vocal about plummeting birth rates and population decline and has used it as a rationale for colonizing Mars.
“That’s why Musk is saying maybe humans should go to space, maybe build colonies elsewhere, so that should such a tragedy hit Earth, then it could be reseeded,” said Kak.
And while he’s not sure whether humanity will go extinct, he said that “what is absolutely certain is that there is a population collapse occurring right before our eyes.”