Great Reset: Fake AI ‘Tamagotchi Children’ will be Common within 50 Years – Expert Says

Prompted by fears of “overpopulation” problems, one leading expert on AI believes that coming generations will begin raising fake AI “Tamagotchi children” instead of real offspring.

Those of a certain age will no doubt remember “Tamagotchi”, the fake AI pets popular with children to look after and play with until they inevitably gave up the ghost.

However, according to one leading researcher in the UK, another “Tamagotchi Generation” is just over the horizon, but instead of raising mass-produced, pocket-sized digital pets, this new generation will seemingly live a more Blade Runner-esque existence, with would-be parents raising digital children instead of real humans.

So says a report by The Telegraph, which states these fake children would be the product of artificial intelligence (AI), and would reside within so-called “metaverse” realms, the likes of which are being worked on right now by big tech moguls such as Mark Zuckerberg.

Researcher Catriona Campbell expects that such fake AI children will become extremely popular within the next 50 years as popular sentiment gives way to malthusian views, with individuals opting to distract themselves with fake alternatives to children instead of actually raising offspring themselves.

“Virtual children may seem like a giant leap from where we are now, but within 50 years technology will have advanced to such an extent that babies which exist in the metaverse are indistinct from those in the real world,” the publication reports Cambell as saying in her book “AI by Design: A Plan For Living With Artificial Intelligence”, which it says will be hitting shelves this week.

“As the metaverse evolves, I can see virtual children becoming an accepted and fully embraced part of society in much of the developed world,” she continues. “We’re already well on our way to creating the Tamagotchi generation which, for all intents and purposes, will be ‘real’ to their parents.”

“Make no mistake that this development, should it indeed take place, is a technological game-changer which, if managed correctly, could help us solve some of today’s most pressing issues, including overpopulation,” the expert — who has previously worked as an advisor with the UK government — went on to say.