Constantly designed and re-designed by AI

The Children of AI — Chapter 4

A year ago, I shared a vision of how AI could shape the lives of future generations. Through the story of Olive, a child born in 2023, I explore AI's impact on education, social interactions, and personal development. After the last publication focusing on Socio-Political Economy, here's a new chapter...

Climate and the Physical World

It is physically impossible to sustain the resource-intensive, exponential economic growth trajectory that we have been on over the past two centuries; there are literally not enough atoms in the universe to sustain it over the coming millenia.14 AI, however, could present an alternative model, decoupling economic growth from resource consumption, or perhaps decoupling human satisfaction from economic growth.

One future could see humans increasingly consuming virtual experience, constantly designed and re-designed by AI to maximize their enjoyment. Rather than boarding a plane for a 8,000-mile flight to stay in a climate-controlled resort on an island where all physical goods need to be delivered by small plane or boat, the “vacationer” could, instead, be immersed in an even more sensorially appealing virtual experience, consuming only a few watts of electricity, produced by the AI-designed, high-efficiency solar panels on their roof. Could an experience whose carbon footprint would be measured today in tonnes be replaced by a more pleasurable experience whose footprint is measured in grams?

Within this realm of speculation, the floodgates open wide. What other human experiences could be replaced by an AI? And what will be the consequences to some of the most fundamental human activities? Will birth rates, which tend to decline under conditions of economic growth, slope further downward in the era of AI-driven productivity? What if a person who is not ready to commit to the labor and expense of becoming a parent can test the experience of becoming a parent in a virtual world? The “child” could be an AI whose model is trained on the behavioral patterns and expressions of the user and another “parent,” real or virtual, merging the characteristics of the two.

And might all this be ethically and politically justified, furthering its acceptability as a cultural norm? The average annual carbon footprint of a western European in 2023 is about 5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.15 Compared to the near-zero emissions of a computer server powered by decarbonized electricity, the savings are substantial.16

Economies that fall into a net negative birthrate fare poorly in the current economy, would this be true in the AI-powered economy? Are there sub-populations that will continue to maintain higher birth rates? What will this mean for the biological evolution of humankind?

Midlife

2058

Olive is 35 years old. She has been working at the intersection of design and nanotechnologies for 10 years, in a design firm for smart objects. She holds a senior position in a small, cutting-edge design firm, working for the biggest brands to build furniture, automotive components, and even clothing that use new manufacturing methods and have specific properties.

Tastes have changed, and the luxury market is changing its product portfolio, moving toward objects where luxury is not just about aesthetics, branding, or sourcing, but also about new properties of smart objects that make people dream and offer them a glimpse of a better world.

Her firm continuously works on new creative projects, such as dopamine shirts (a nano-sparkle surface for shirts that increases dopamine levels in observers) or the so-called window-wall (a self-shading window that eliminates the need for curtains, improves thermal insulation, and also serves as a visual projection screen, beautifying of the outside world through subtle augmented reality).

One of the added values of her firm is the constant use of artificial intelligence systems to accelerate and optimize designs. An AI system has been developed by the firm over the years to simulate the reliability of a design, automate responses to human input, build representative user groups, and suggest alternative materials.

In the firm, Olive specializes in communicating objects that adapt to the user's mood and desire. She is an advocate of the "no-button/no-choice" design philosophy, whereby objects are designed to communicate with the user as implicitly as possible.

Her big breakthrough comes with The Implicit Lamp, a desk lamp that reacts to implicit commands from its user. There is no defined way to turn on or off The Implicit Lamp. One can snap their fingers, or tap it, and the lamp learns the user's signal over time. A video goes viral of a user who can control their Implicit Lamp by looking at it and furrowing their brow. The lamp becomes a blockbuster, with bedside versions and models that create a colored atmosphere to improve the user's mood or concentration.

The success of the lamp and some of her work contract royalties allow Olive ease up on the throttle, to take stock of her personal life with calm and without worry.

In terms of personal life, Olive has not yet started a family; in fact, like most of her age group, she is not sure she wants to. What will the living conditions on Earth be like in 30 years? In 50 years? Is now the right time to have children? How does she envision life with her children while she is only working? Won’t they, anyway, spend more time with their Personal Learning Assistant than with her once they are weaned?

Fertility rates are declining, and Olive is also frightened by the success of the objects she creates. The Implicit Lamp is a fantastic object, but building an implicit lamp has a huge environmental impact. Worse, the lamp continuously consumes energy in order to observe the environment. Lamps didn't use to have embedded GPUs.

After finishing the design for version 3 of the Implicit Lamp, Olive takes a few weeks of vacation. Flying has become too expensive, but even in May, the sea by the coast is warm. Global warming has had its benefits.

Taking some time just for herself, she realizes that she thinks humanity should spend less time buying, less time building, and more time dreaming. But how to make more people dream, while creating an economic revolution?

Olive also thinks about her own dreams. With her talent, she has the means to make them real — a fact which might once have seemed to her a kind of magic.

She launches something she calls FamilyWorld?. A virtual reality universe created by AI, in which an existing or virtual couple can create and raise children. FamilyWorld? becomes a huge success, particularly due to the incredible realism of the social interactions and family-related emotions generated in the virtual universe. The AI built by Olive and her team is so potent that it strikes a nerve across the world.

Humans begin connecting with each other through their desire for virtual children. Their own behavioral and cognitive models that have been developed over decades of interactivity with AI are merged in FamilyWorld? to create those of their virtual children. Weights and biases replace genes and chromosomes. An entire economy with a quickly growing population is created in the virtual universe while birth rates in the physical world stagnate.

FamilyWorld? is the first platform to reach 100 million users in less than a month after its launch. During its second year, FamilyWorld? rolls out a marketplace to design and sell toys for the platform.

During its third year, FamilyWorld? becomes a fully fledged media platform: why watch a series alone on your preferred streaming platform when you can watch it as a family instead?

After 5 years, researchers publish studies in Nature about the systemic impact of FamilyWorld? on fertility (-3%) and leisure travel (-10%). Its environmental impact is major: although FamilyWorld? is one of the main consumers of electricity (mostly decarbonized at this point) and bandwidth on the planet, the transfer of family leisure time and the better part of economic activity to a virtual universe has measurably positive effects on the environment. Ever fewer humans enjoy this new world.

Despite its sustainability, FamilyWorld? is subject to controversies; most are negative, related to the decay of family values and the loss of traditional ways of life. But some are also positive: does the platform not provide a way for people to learn how to behave as a parent in the virtual world for a few years before deciding whether they want children, with full awareness of the consequences? What previous generation ever enjoyed such a benefit? The fact is that birth rates have dropped because more people are choosing not to have children once they’ve developed a better understanding of what parenthood would be like. What kind of people are, because of this, not being born?

Olive has realized her dream of making others dream; she herself does not use FamilyWorld, nor does she have a real family. But she becomes one of the first trillionaires in virtual reality, taking into account three decades of inflation.

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5. Society and Humanism