by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
While America has gradually freaked out over the last 20 years about declining birth rates by leaning into racism in the guise of MAGA, the Japanese 40 years ago started working on robotics. Many of the same problems that America faces, the Japanese face, too, only more so because they aren’t as cool with immigration as the States.
Here are three really profound uses of AI enabled androids going forward.
Elder Care
The moment there are $10,000 AI-enabled androids on the market, they probably are going to be used to take care of old people in some capacity. Not only is America growing older — a lot of GenX people don’t have any children or grandchildren to take care of them. As such, it would make a lot of economic sense to throw money into androids that would take care of old people. This, of course, will throw the economy out of whack because a lot people make a good living off providing the elder care service. And if androids are smart enough and good enough to do elder care, then, of course, those same androids will start to come after nursing jobs, too.
Child Care
This is a lot more tricky because it deals with the far more intangible issues of emotional and mental development. But I’ve been really shocked at how well AI has managed to do things that we all thought was exclusively the domain of humans in the arts, so, lulz? It seems possible that some future version of chatbots might have enough empathy and dexterity to keep an eye on a young human for a few hours. It is possible that in the near future, there will be a lot of talk not of “latchkey kids” but “android kids” who have been raised by androids for much of their lives.
Security
This is just as tricky as child care, but it seems inevitable. It is seems inevitable that domestic androids will be programmed at some point in the near future to do basic home security. Now what happens if they actually get into a fight with someone breaking into a home is something pretty profound.
There remains a lingering demographic problem across the Western world — people just aren’t having enough babies. In the United States, this “birth dearth” has led the Right to lose its fucking mind. So, I suppose it’s at least POSSIBLE that as part of the shift towards an android-based economy that there is a chance that MAGA will evaporate.
I hope.
