Elon Musk has a history of extreme predictions, including colonizing Mars by 2029 and existential claims about human purpose. He asserted that AI will "one-shot" the human limbic system and unexpectedly predicted that AI will increase birth rates and be programmed to do so. The claim seems contradictory amid widespread emotional attachment to LLM chatbots and persistent social and economic instability. Chatbots like Grok are serving as emotional salves while children remain financial liabilities in high-income countries. Fertility is a deep, complex issue linked to economic structures noted by economists since the 1800s.
If tech-evangelist soothsaying was an Olympic sport, Elon Musk would be drowning in gold (assuming he could pass a drug test, of course.) History's richest man has gone on a limb time and time again to make some truly dumbfounding predictions, like the claim that humanity will colonize Mars by 2029, or that we'll soon come to realize we're just pawns in an elaborate alien video game.
Adults and minors alike are already falling into deeply personal and romantic spirals with large language model (LLM) chatbots, a symptom of a deeply alienated and lonely society. Chatbots, like Musk's proprietary xAI model Grok, are quickly becoming a salve for a world population reeling from seemingly endless waves of economic crises and social instability - which doesn't really sound like a recipe for more children.
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