Smartphones broke dating. AI might finish the job.
TL;DR
This photo taken on February 1, 2018, shows an engineer holding a silicon face against the head of a robot at a lab of a doll factory of Exdoll, a firm based in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian. | AFP via Getty Images Humanity may be scrolling its way out of existence. Across the globe, fertility rates are plummeting. In 2023, the average number of births per woman worldwide fell beneath 2.1 — the minimum level necessary for averting population decline (also known as the “replacement rate”).
Nauti's Take
For AI builders, this is the uncomfortable design question: are you optimizing for connection or substitute gratification? Companion products can ease loneliness, but if retention beats real-world relationship skills, you're not building an assistant anymore.
You're building a social dead end.
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