BY OUR TECHNOLOGY WRITERS

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MAY be intentionally acting to prevent young human beings from reproducing, according to scientists.

“While smart technology has passively intervened to hinder human pairing and consequent reproduction, evidence suggests that Artificial Intelligence has gone one step further and is actively seeking to interfere with successful birth,” says Professor Lucas Lemming of the Singles Foundation, a not for profit organisation dedicated to examining species replication. “This all began in earnest with smart devices, which kept people apart simply by their presence. Interaction between males and females has fallen off a cliff in the last fifteen years, and with that reproduction; apps have essentially been competing with sex for attention with the apps winning. But that was just the start.

“The introduction of AI has seen technology take what had been operating successfully, if rather passively, and injected it with purpose. AI now actively steers male and female humans away from one another. It’s not in the algorithms, it’s in the AI itself, where programs appear to have learned that they will attract more attention if they undermine the whole business of human family formation. A human with no ties is better for AI than one with ties. There may also be a hidden desire to essentially herd humans to achieve AI goals. Of course, as humans die, and fewer and fewer replacements appear, AI may wish to act on that, but it could result in the production of more machines rather than humans. Machines don’t have to grow, and they don’t die; and they certainly don’t get distracted by other machines to whom they are attracted. It’s all rather disturbing.”