The AI boom has a fertility problem
Even if we expect AI to be as impactful as electricity, a shrinking population will cancel out much of its benefit
THE world’s advanced economies could be facing a slow-moving train wreck that they appear powerless to stop. We are no longer producing enough babies.
Fertility rates in many European and East Asian countries, along with the US, are on an alarming trajectory. How alarming? Demographics may become nearly as big a deal for the US as artificial intelligence in the decades ahead – but working in the opposite direction.
If AI adds economic growth, a shrinking population will subtract growth, leaving us without the resources needed to support an ageing population and threatening unrest as young people baulk at the welfare costs of ever more retirees even as their share of the pie shrinks.
