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AI Expert Predicts We’ll Have ‘Virtual’ Babies Within 50 Years


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One of the UK’s leading authorities in artificial intelligence predicts would-be parents will opt for fake ‘Tamagotchi Children’ to quell concerns about ‘overpopulation.’

‘Experts’ believe the ‘population crisis’ will compel more people to embrace digital children, which require “minimal resources and cost nothing to raise.”

Artificial intelligence expert Catriona Campbell made the prediction  in a newly published book AI by Design: A Plan For Living With Artificial Intelligence.

As The Gateway Pundit noted:

“Virtual children may seem like a giant leap from where we are now…but within 50 years technology will have advanced to such an extent that babies which exist in the metaverse are indistinct from those in the real world,” Campbell writes. “As the metaverse evolves, I can see virtual children becoming an accepted and fully embraced part of society in much of the developed world.”

Campbell claims the virtual baby boom will usher in the “Tamagotchi Generation,” a reference to handheld digital pets that became one of the biggest toy fads in the early 2000s.

“We’re already well on our way to creating the Tamagotchi generation which, for all intents and purposes, will be ‘real’ to their parents,” Campbell notes. “On the basis that consumer demand is there, which I think it will be, AI children will become widely available for a relatively small monthly fee.

To cuddle, feed and play with the virtual children, people will wear gloves that simulate physical sensations. Advance machine learning, facial tracking and voice analysis would allow the AI offspring to recognize and respond to their parents.

“Make no mistake that this development, should it indeed take place, is a technological game-changer which, if managed correctly, could help us solve some of today’s most pressing issues, including overpopulation.”

The New York Post added:

The average American child costs parents more than $230,000 by the time they reach the age of 17, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

A digital kid, on the other hand, could have all its needs met for less than $25 per month — that’s just about $5,100 by the time they reach high school graduation — according to the UK’s leading artificial intelligence expert.

Amid poverty, disease epidemics, climate change and overcrowding, experts worry that the estimated 11 billion people that will populate Earth by 2100 won’t get the food, health care and other essential resources they need for survival. And that’s a real concern for would-be parents, according to a 2020 YouGov poll that found nearly 10% of adults have already chosen to remain childless for these reasons, while another 10% cited the financial impact of having kids.

“Based on studies into why couples choose to remain childless, I think it would be reasonable to expect as many as 20% of people choosing to have an AR [augmented reality] baby over a real one,” said Catriona Campbell, a former technology adviser for the British government and a British Interactive Media Association Digital Hall of Fame inductee.

This “game-changing” outlook “could help us solve some of today’s most pressing issues,” she said.

While artificial intelligence ‘experts’ and mainstream media glamorize digital children, the United States birth rate has fallen to its lowest point in decades.

The American birth rate fell for the sixth consecutive year in 2020, the lowest number of babies born since 1979, according to the CDC.

“Some 3.6 million babies were born in the US in 2020 – marking a 4% decline from the year before, found the CDC National Center for Health Statistics,” the BBC reports.

“The slump was seen across all recorded ethnicities and origins, according to the findings.”



 

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