If the productivity isn't well-distributed, it's all the more reason to have fewer mouths to feed.

Have you pictured what that will look like in practice?

It can't be worse than too many children, not enough work. We've had that for most of our history.

Have you pictured what a society with mostly unproductive humans (relative to AI) and no income redistribution looks like? Peaceful and tranquil aren't words I'd use to describe it.

A false dichotomy. I did not suggest rampant population growth. Not that I agree with your characterization anyway.

> I did not suggest rampant population growth

Neither did I. My argument is we need a long-term population decrease to maintain a stable society if all the wild AI predictions come true. We simply can't have 25% unemployment for multiple generations without something like UBI. And even with UBI there will be lots of idle hands and unrest.

In that sense we're lucky that the AI boom and a trend toward smaller family sizes is happening roughly at the same time.

A halving of the world population is like the world as it was in 1970. Not some Dark Age devoid of prosperity. Getting to that in 2 or 3 generations, in the absence of a climate change calamity, wouldn't be the worst thing.

I don’t personally see AI as replacing a significant portion of workers any time soon, nor our government implementing UBI if it does. But should both those things come to pass then sure, the devastating effects of population decline on our economy could be mitigated to some degree.

The population doesn’t just halve. Instead the population ages dramatically.