What’s going on with fertility?
It’s dropping. Earth’s population may peak sooner than expected…
…and then what?
I found out about diminishing fertility and peaking population in Popular Mechanics, a magazine I fondly recall reading around the time I was driving a sporty muscle car around town: a Pontiac GTO.
I remember paging through car magazines… Popular Mechanics, Motor Trend, Hot Rod, and other publications, sometimes at the barbershop, while I was waiting to have my haircut, and I remember hearing the lyrics of a popular song about that powerful Pontiac, in my mind:
Little GTO, you’re really lookin’ fine
Three deuces and a four-speed and a 389…
C’mon and turn it on, wind it up, blow it out, GTO…
It was the surfrock group, ‘Ronny & The Daytonas’, singing that song about a car I got to turn on and wind up, at times, before starting out in my business career… and switching to more conservative, staid automobiles, with fewer cubic inches than the 389 in the GTO’s rumbling, growling, V-8 engine.
Popular Mechanics, I’ve associated with cars, but, in addition to stories about automotive technology, stories about a range of technology and science topics are featured in the publication, that was founded in 1902.
Fertility, of course, would fall in the science category of topics. And ‘mechanics?’ Perhaps, that’s best left to one’s imagination.
But, whether we’re talking about science, mechanics, or whatever, diminishing fertility and population might be concerning, especially with AI (artificial intelligence) under rather intense development lately. That’s what I’ve been hearing in the media.
AI, someday, might be capable of doing a lot of things we humans can do. Up to a certain point, of course… but then again? Who knows for sure?
So… if we’re all peaking, sooner than expected, with our fertility diminishing, could that leave the door open for AI, so to speak?
If AI had been around in the 1960s, could it have turned on and wound up a little GTO that was “really lookin’ fine?”
Could it have sipped fine wine at a cozy bistro, charming everyone… or everything… as the case may be?
Could it have whispered in ears, and, shall we say, performed in various other ways?
Should we humans be concerned, as we may be peaking and weakening? Or, should we not be getting all worked up… hot and bothered?
We’re humans, after all! We’re the real thing, and not a bunch of sensors, robotic gizmos, and speech recognition devices.
AI can’t do it, like we do it, can it?
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.