On your last point, I've noticed an uptick in folks treating their dogs in ways most people might treat their children. So while I think on paper what you say makes sense, at some point, I think people are in fact personifying their pets to a degree that they recognize them as adjacent to human beings.
But in the end, the chickens always come home to roost. Dogs cannot support you in your old age; they cannot give you the pride of seeing a child go off to college; they cannot captivate you with conversations as they grow into full adults; and of course, they die far, far earlier than you.
Similarly, the AI companions we create will be simulacra of the real thing. It's hard to say what exactly the differences will be, but whatever they are, people will find them, and once discovered, those gaps will pain them.
And if your kid has downs or gets hit by a car or is an addict or a fuck up, they're not going to be able to support you into old age either. And then you're responsible for them as well, until you're too old and senile yourself, and then what?
That's not to say don't have kids, but go into it with your eyes open, don't assume they're your lifeline to the future.
Or more likely, their kids are still going to be renting and living paycheck to paycheck at 50, so they aren’t going to have time, space, energy, or money to take care of the parents when they are barely treading water.
I encounter a lot of people my age and younger whose own retirement plant is basically:
Plan A: Miraculously get rich
Plan S: When severe disability or pain hits, find the exit.
Maby it’s the lifelong depression, the disappointment at what the future’s become, or the hopelessness that society can escape neo-feudalism to something better, but there’s a noticeable decrease in the desire to keep living at any cost. Who knows whether we’ll actually see this start to see this express in the next few decades.
To be fair - this first plan is actually very doable if you're a reasonably skilled programmer in the 21st century.
Like you know that Tim Bray article about Bitcoin where he's like "and that's the thing about late stage capitalism, there's so much money floating around that people can't find a use for that we get stuff like cryptocurrency speculation"?
Find one reasonably convincing business idea, bonus points if it uses current hot tech trends, ask rich boomers for money via "seeking venture capital funding/investment", pay yourself an exorbitant salary for 5 years and then close shop because "we ran out of funding but the market didn't materialize".
If you're posting on Hacker News, and you want to be rich, I reckon you can reasonably expect to have a seven figure net worth in a decade or so if you consistently make good decisions.
Sure. Kids are not guaranteed to provide all the things kids could provide. But dogs are guaranteed to not provide many of them. Life happens, but we still try to set ourselves up for happiness regardless.
Did I say they were? I just said that dogs cannot be, even if they want to be. This is just one of many things that kids can help with, and for the vast majority of parents in the world, do help with.
This applies to everything else I said too. Your kids are not obliged to spend their time talking with you, but you can hope that they will -- the same cannot be said for a dog.
Somebody is gonna make billions with AI vests for dogs that senses the dog's mood through Fitbit like sensors and produces human voice in the way that's consistent with behavior and history and desirable for the owner that wants to personify their pet further. Basically a cyberdog.
