In 50 years, people will raise, care for, play with, and pamper virtual children, either with daughters and sons or, more likely, as a substitute for them. This future is described by one of the leading British experts in artificial intelligence Catriona Cambell in her new book 'AI by Design: A Plan For Living With Artificial Intelligence'.
She believes that living with digital children will be commonplace. She describes how computer-generated offspring, who can look just like you, will exist only in a digital world known as the metaverse, which can be accessed using virtual reality technology.
She refers to virtual children as the 'Tamagotchi' generation (alluding to digital pets, i.e., devices that were very popular among children in the 1990s and 2000s). She believes that virtual children will have photorealistic faces and bodies – thanks to CGI (computer-generated imagery) technology and advanced machine learning – and that they will be able to recognize their parents and respond to them using voice analysis and facial tracking.
She is also convinced that such children will be easily accessible, for a relatively small monthly fee. And she believes that 'Tamagotchi' children could help combat overpopulation. Their upbringing, she estimates, will not be demanding or expensive.
Incidentally, a study by the British company YouGov two years ago revealed that nearly 10 percent of couples do not have children because they are concerned about the overpopulation of the planet, and another ten percent do not want to have children due to additional costs.
