One look at the age pyramid of the world, or fertility statistics, will immediately drive home the point that we will in fact build machines to raise them and love them. I mean even in the places that for some reason currently feel comfortable with their birth statistics, there's no denying that the current generation is the last one to be larger than the one that came before it. In most countries, even that is not the case. In the US, GenX is the last one that was larger than the one before it, and only by the teensiest of margins. In Europe, that would have happened in the 80s.

A "child" that requires far less resources will be a product that will be incredibly popular. Not to mention an economic necessity.

And I would even say : 100 billion "small" AIs (scale vaguely comparable to a human mind) is a far preferable situation to one big AI. Both from a survivability standpoint and from an "oh my God it'll kill us all" standpoint.

> "We don't build machines in order to raise them and love them; we build them to get work done.

I would even say, if it's at all possible we'll do just that in the next 10-15 years. If we don't get advanced enough AI, perhaps 20-25 years.

Not a doubt in my mind.

If one doesn't want living child, why on earth would they need mechanical one?

(Except for Japanese of course. Excluding them from this question)

Seriously, fertility will become no issue if we prolong fertile period of our lives. Imagine having one kid at thirty, and another one at sixty.

I sort of get you, personally I feel the same. But then I walk around here and see people with dogs in baby carriages. Why ? Because they could never have a child, they're too old, or cannot or don't want to spend the money they think it'll require.

The problem does not tend to be that it's physically impossible to get a child.