To remain competitive, humans must show up.

Humans add the most value in high-income nations. In these nations, humans' total fertility rate has been below the replacement level of 2.1 since 1974.

On top of that, today's artificial narrow intelligence is a mixed bag.

AI does provide convenient tools for searching, developing designs, and optimizing processes.

But even when humans show up, our cognition isn't as strong. In exchange for gaining quick, broad access to information, we learn less about where to find content. We retain fewer memories. We get less practice at processing information. We lose some of our neural connection strength and width. We feel less that we're the owners of our work.

Also, our motivation isn't as strong. AI already is an addictive: at prices that are affordable in the near term, it offers continuous near-term satisfactions.

Humans are getting dependent on AI, but we're not strongly dependent on AI yet. In a study of two AI-powered social media platforms, TikTok and Instagram, large shares of users would have preferred that these platforms wouldn't exist. Users of other AI apps may similarly prefer that these apps wouldn't exist.

AI care and feeding

Humans' use of AI is starting to compete with humans' other uses of scarce resources.

A current AI server's information-processing rate may be on the order of a hundred-millionth of a human brain's rate.

And yet, the AI server's energy use is 500 times the human brain's.

With the AI server population only 0.6% of the high-income human population, AI data center electricity use is already 1% of all electricity use.

So then, humans are currently doing almost all of the calculating. Also, appropriately given current capabilities and efficiency, humans are doing all of the creative risk-taking, building, operating, and maintaining.