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Personally I'm a huge tech optimist AGI in the next few years or at least next few decades believer and I really don't think a fair bit of these things are going to be an issue. Lowered birth rates sound awful at first, but we've already made significant advantages into artificial wombs for preemies and the idea that this tech could eventually extend to the very beginning of a pregnancy until birth doesn't seem unreasonable anymore. With stable conditions and active monitoring they might even be able to be healthier! What care do we have if people aren't fucking when we won't need people to fuck for society to have children anyway? And with AGIs, robots can be effective parents (probably better on average if they aren't abusive) for the artificial womb babies.
But even that is a complete misdirection, birth rates won't be much of an issue to begin with. The current problem with an aging society is that the old don't produce as much as the youth do, but still consume resources. But who cares about that if AGI bots can do all the work for humans? There's barely a difference in productivity between a society of average age 35 vs 55 when almost all the labor is handled by automation to begin with. And with AGI, just building another robot will always be more efficient to improving the lives of already living people than creating a new baby and having to raise them.
Of course this sort of concept is creepy and inhumane and no one really wants to talk about it. The idea of machines birthing and raising human children feels disturbing for an old population that doesn't work but it's honestly one of the better possible outcomes. People are happy and humanity thrives and grows increasing utility in multiple ways. And at the very least it's way preferable to a future where humanity shrinks/goes extinct instead whether from low birthrates or robots killing us.
It doesn't? Pumping oxygenated air into an existing umbilical cord is different from growing one de novo along with a placenta. The best people have done to oxygenate/feed a blastocyst is mechanical rollers (I assume this is the paper you're referring to). IVF followed by gestation is still an entire other, much more difficult, level.
Don't believe anything you hear until it's in clinical trials, unless you're a biotech investor/entrepreneur. Otherwise, it may as well not exist for the public.
I like these types of arguments so much. The "oh my god this tech is so simple now, just do X Y Z thing that we didn't know about or understand until relatively recently. It can't possibly be used as an example of how we discover and invent new things". That alone is still something that people just a bit ago didn't know.
This recent thing was just 2017. Why should I not assume there will be substantial progress on artificial womb technology in the next 50 years if barriers to research this topic decrease and AI massively amplifies research ability? It doesn't mean we're close yet, but each step forward is progress made to a better understanding.
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I'm of the belief that more children and families are an inherent good, independent of any societal effect that a declining population may have. Same thing with having less friends - regardless of whatever economic effects come of it, the fostering of love between to close friends, between husband and wife, between parent and child is worth preserving in its own right.
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