Hi medinot—thanks a lot for writing this up and contributing to the forum!
I never heard of artificial wombs before other than the “The Pod Generation” movie and I think the idea is cool.
What I would love to see when you are making such a big decision as whether you should dedicate your career to it is a Theory of Change (have you heard about this?) to make your assumptions about why this would be impactful more explicit.
Spontaneous questions that arise for me are: what are the concrete harms with population collapse? How will research be conducted to find the effects of artificial wombs on the children born from them? How will the economics of this technology look like (and could it give rise to inequality)? Are there more benefits to artificial wombs that we don’t think of?
With regards to your point on harms of population collapse. My belief is that changes to population structure that increases the ratio of non-working-to-working people increases the likelihood of permanent recession. I can only think of negative consequences for this outcome. The promise that a reduced labour force will not lead to recession due to compensatory large-scale automation from AGI within the next 20 years is something I do not weight as highly as others.
Hi medinot—thanks a lot for writing this up and contributing to the forum!
I never heard of artificial wombs before other than the “The Pod Generation” movie and I think the idea is cool.
What I would love to see when you are making such a big decision as whether you should dedicate your career to it is a Theory of Change (have you heard about this?) to make your assumptions about why this would be impactful more explicit.
Spontaneous questions that arise for me are: what are the concrete harms with population collapse? How will research be conducted to find the effects of artificial wombs on the children born from them? How will the economics of this technology look like (and could it give rise to inequality)? Are there more benefits to artificial wombs that we don’t think of?
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Not comfortable answering your second question :)
With regards to your point on harms of population collapse. My belief is that changes to population structure that increases the ratio of non-working-to-working people increases the likelihood of permanent recession. I can only think of negative consequences for this outcome. The promise that a reduced labour force will not lead to recession due to compensatory large-scale automation from AGI within the next 20 years is something I do not weight as highly as others.