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- Hacker News
- The CCP trying to get fertility rates up by cracking down on lesbians, paying money for children and now cracking down on whatever this is.
It's no use, though. You need a good economic and social outlook to get people to even consider having children. And this ain't it.
- Personally no amount of social outlook would want me want children. I simply don't want to have them I don't like raising or interacting with children it's just not in my nature and I really feel like a lot of that has to do with how people are nurtured.by himata4113
- Given comparison reports between people's opinions of AI and the future between China and the US, I think it is.by fragmede
- Indeed. Impoverished third world countries are known for having very low birthrates.by bakugo
- I hope the rest of the world follows suit. Can you imagine the human misery venture capital could inflict by pursuing this vertical?by zinodaur
- Yes, it already exists and it's called dating appsby stevemk14ebr
- Is this "pacing the frontier"?by tcdent
- As a society, we do need to think about what "responsible ai" means and how we legislate for it without over regulating Ai outrightby verdverm
- I legit thought the title was a linguistic euphemism targeted at dario and sama.by FLeXMurphy
- I wonder how this would effect products like Love and Deepspace. That gacha game is HUGE.by anon-3988
- A friend is in China right now.
I spent some time on the phone with him the other day, as he wandered around the city where he's working.
It was Sunday there, most people's day off, and he was amazed at how many people were out in the public parks, playing chess and go, kids on the playground equipment. inter-generational interaction.
His impression was that China has a much higher level of people randomly interacting with other's IRL than here in the US.
by johnea - I wonder how that looks per capita. I'd wager very similar between China and the US.
- Could be just China has a much higher population density. US cities sometimes feel like "ghost towns" in China to me...
- playing chess and go, kids on the playground
most of those people were likely a bit older, already retired, and were out watching their grandchildren. sunday there is no school or kindergarten.
by em-bee - We need more meat for the meat grinder. You will reproduce.by hollow-moe
- Yes, Gov's require populations to have "real" offspring. Authoritarian or not, this makes sense. IMO its only a matter of time before some version of this hits the US; if it has not already.
- Maybe we can have the government provide token quotas as you have offspring.
Zero children = you (the parent) get zero tokens
One child = the parents get 18-years worth of tokens
Two children = the parents get 2 x 18-years worth of tokens
...
by warkdarrior - That will only be true until it occurs to them to tax robotic productivity. This whole issue feels like a temporary one.by CamperBob2
- Zero AI child policyby glouwbug
- I kinda feel like if people have to turn to AI for companionship, it's the same as using AI for therapy - because the real thing isn't available and any number of systems have failed those people along the way.
In a sense, that might be a bit telling of the modern day society: in what world is it so difficult to make meaningful connections to people, that if a real human relationship can be like 5x more meaningful (made up numbers, but surely people will agree that a real relationship can have more depth) than whatever the AI can provide, and people still choose that over the real thing? Or maybe the average person kind of sucks, or the way relationships are treated sucks, or maybe the AI is like crack for impressionable brains, or people don't want a real relationship and just want some sycophantic whatever, I don't know.
Maybe it's a numbers game and some people will never find that for real (gender skew, demographics etc.), maybe it's a failing at those people not being properly socialized, maybe they themselves have something that society doesn't value ("Be yourself! No, not like that."), or just aren't pleasant for any number of reasons, don't have a third place to go for, don't have money to go and partake in social activities, have been brainwashed by hateful social media propaganda or any other mix of circumstances.
Feels like it's probably easier to ban AI and pretend all of the other issues don't exist, rather than addressing them.
by KronisLV - I'd recommend checking out Sherry Turkle's work. It's not as much about availability as friction. Ai does not come with the friction IRL does, so people turn to it as an "easy mode"
I applaud the CCP for getting out in front of this one. It's way more a concern in my mind than data centers
by verdverm - If people are born into a situation or simply have had bad luck with who they decided to trust, after enough betrayal you decide that juice of relationships isn't worth the squeeze. I'm pretty much there in my life, I don't seek companionship in AI (nor can I ever imagine doing so) but more than casual friendships and especially romance is not worth the work or the pain.by SoftTalker
- My $0.02 is when it comes to dating, social media ruined people’s “standards” [0]
People would rather chill and be single than date the wrong guy, even if they aren’t bringing much to the table themselves…
[0] - same energy as the teen girls have low self esteem due to magazine covers and instagram.
by itake - Off topic, but I have always wondered if the real advantage of an AI therapist is it has little power over you and will not snitch you to the authorities if you say something "wrong." People walk on eggshells when talking to human therapists because they know if they say something about hurting themselves or others, they can end up in a mental institution, losing their jobs, the custody of their children, their home, everything. AI companies seem to just not care enough to monitor the chats for these kind of things. For better or worse.by pibaker
- > maybe the average person kind of sucks, or the way relationships are treated sucks
It's friction right? The last 150 years of progress have been all about removing friction.
And relationships are a great source of friction.
As a side note, I think it's this push for frictionlessness, this is the same force which has resulted in the loss of meaning.
Structure and community are seen as oppressive.
At last, we have been liberated from both.
by andai - If you took someone from the 1990s and dumped them in 2026, I think one of the biggest shocks to them would be how optional humans are everywhere. You can't get a human on the phone when you call a business anymore. We check out our own groceries with machines now. We order fast food from a kiosk or app instead of a person. Self-driving taxis. Robots doing work and AI making content. Apps mediating all kinds of relationships (personal, romantic, business, employee-employer) rather than the humans themselves. We've kind of just allowed technology to start making us all irrelevant. What is the return on this investment?by ryandrake