Chapter 14: Robots, longevity and the global population shift

I do not — I do not — um, I do find it incredibly compelling.

Um, all right, I want to bring us to our final story here today and it's an important one. Um, you know, this is underlying much of what we discuss on Moonshots. So, we've noted before, you know, people are having fewer babies. We're going to see a massive drop-off in the human population, and people are now living longer and healthier. And this is changing the global demographic.

So uh here's a chart showing the growth in uh the number of people over 65 and the drop in the number of newborns 0 to age 5 on the planet. The global population over 65 is projected to grow from 852 million uh back in 2025 to 2 billion by 2060. That's more than half of all population growth over that period is coming from people over 65.

The result, at least in the old economy, is that fewer working age people supporting more retirees is going to put huge economic pressure on pensions, on healthcare in every developed economy. The only way the math works out in this future is because of the topics we discuss on this pod, right? AI and robots doing the work for missing workers, people living longer and healthier, not needing to retire, maintaining themselves as economic contributors, right? What's the reason you retire? You're in pain. Uh, you're feeling less energy, or you're forced out uh because of policy.

And this is why I say longevity is not a luxury. It's an economic policy for the century ahead. Right? An 80-year-old with the body and mind of a 50-year-old isn't a pension liability. They're a founder in this future economy. So, you've all heard the saying, you know, demographics are destiny. Well, robots that do the work and therapies that add healthy decades are rewriting destiny.

Um, gentlemen, uh, your thoughts. Salim, you want to jump in first?

Uh, very simple follow-up. I mean, this is why we need the robotaxis and the robots and so on, because we're going to need to redesign the entire concept of uh lifespan to health span to jobs. You know, the concept of education, career, retirement essentially evaporates, right? You have to have repeated cycles of learning, creation, and then taking a sabbatical, etc., etc. And longevity combined with AI totally disrupts who works, how they work, how long they work, what they do. And so it's going to completely change the game. We need to rethink that whole thing from the bottom up.

We've seen the preview with what's happening in Japan, and you need it. China is moving to robots because they have to, because of the one child policy and the population bomb that's coming towards them.

Great point. So they have to do it. They don't have a choice.

Yeah, these numbers can make the world much more interesting. Sorry.

These numbers are hugely understated because they include India and parts of Africa that are still having babies like crazy. But if you look at China and you look at Europe, the numbers are much more acute than this. It's like there will be basically kindergartens and grade schools that are completely empty and massive numbers of over-65s. Uh, and it's not very far in the future.

It's also — America is largely immune because we have huge amounts of immigration, right, in the working age bracket. You don't tend to have a lot of immigrants that are 65 and over. And so you won't notice it as much in the US, but other parts of the world this is basically going to completely rip the working class out of the economy. And then the voters are overwhelmingly not employed. And so it's going to create — I mean, it's already a mess, but it's going to create all kinds of strange things in those jurisdictions.

I would just add, this is what victory looks like. This is what we want to see. 150,000 people plus per day on Earth are dying, and putting an end to that, at least the beginnings of putting an end to that, is what this looks like, where people are starting to live longer, uh, and people are starting to stop dying.

And the counterfactual looks more like the Limits to Growth from the Club of Rome, which I think was like early 1970s, potentially, depending on your vantage point, a horribly racist perspective on what — in its earliest form.

Yeah, like based on the false premise that somehow humans are going to be overcrowding uh purportedly scarce surface area of the planet and that was going to lead to decrepit conditions of living for everyone. Utter nonsense. This inverted pyramid, which some would call, you know, I guess the opposite of pronatalism — it's not anti-natalism. This is what a happy future looks like, where we have ultimately far more AI agents than we do humans, and longevity escape velocity is vanquished. We want this future.

Yeah. So I think that there are two major opportunities here. One is integrated elder care with robots at a high level, but the other one is integrated baby care. We should have more kids. Kids are wonderful, and having a fully integrated care for kids throughout, that can reduce the cost of child care and supporting and raising kids in the best way, is probably the biggest thing anyone could do for humanity, because there deserves to be more of us. So, let's have more kids. Let's figure out that problem.

All right, gentlemen. I love this episode. You guys — I love spending time with all of you. This was brilliant.

Listen, I need to say something about what Emad said. Love my kid to death, but damn, the work of being a parent is the biggest biological scam ever. It's just an unbelievable amount of work.

It's very rewarding. It's very —

Between those comments and then your prior comments about marriage over longevity escape velocity — what's going on?

I get permission from Lily to make some of these comments.

All right, guys. Uh, we'll be [unclear] away in 3 days. We'll see you again soon for our next episode. Dave, Alex, Salim, Emad, love you guys.

Great conversation. Brilliant as always.