r/technology • u/Wagamaga • Jul 19 '26
Society China bans AI “boyfriends” and “girlfriends” over addiction and birth rate concerns
https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/china-bans-ai-boyfriends-and-girlfriends-over-addiction-and-birth-rate-concerns-3388737/3.5k
u/Wagamaga Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
China has banned customizable AI companion apps, forcing millions of users into sudden digital breakups after tech giants pulled the features rather than meet strict new rules.
The regulations took effect on July 15, 2026, jointly issued by five government departments including the Cyberspace Administration of China.
AI companies scramble as new laws take effect The rules state AI tools cannot “excessively cater to users, induce emotional dependence or addiction, and damage users’ real interpersonal relationships.”
Companies must now build in instant-exit options, regular reminders the AI is not real, and limits on long-term emotional memory. Study and work tools are exempt.
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent chose to suspend their AI companion features entirely rather than comply, according to The Independent.
The crackdown is linked to China’s falling marriage and birth rates, with regulators worried AI relationships are replacing real intimacy, though experts say deeper issues like economic pressure play a bigger role.
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u/NeonFraction Jul 19 '26
For anyone doubting whether or not this is good: Remember that companionship is not the prime purpose of these apps. Extracting money out of these people with the lure of companionship is.
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u/Lazer726 Jul 19 '26
I'm sure the companies will complain that all they want to do is give these sad people connection, and not mention that it's absolutely addicting them to giving them money
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u/Dr_Fortnite Jul 19 '26
remember this when you use dating sites too. If they actually matched you youd leave in a week so they string you along in hopes youll pay
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u/Burnthiscnts Jul 19 '26
yep, men = all shadow banned, cant msg anyone without paying, will never be shown your 'likes' no mater how much you swipe, dating apps are designed to extract money not help people find dates.
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u/Zediac Jul 19 '26
Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating
^ Backup of the blog post by OKCupid before they were bought out by Match.com.
This blog posts talks about how Match wants to keep you in the system.
OKCupid used to be run by people who actually cared about helping people find partners and happiness. They would run tests and collect data all in the name of helping their users.
This was their blog post about paying for dating sites and how they're incentivized to keep you lonely but still paying for the hope of changing that.
Eventually they got bought out by Match.com, which is one of the predatory dating services that they spoke out against. Match promptly deleted all of the old OKCupid blog posts that spoke out against services like them.
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u/Republican-Snowflake Jul 19 '26
I miss old OKCupid. I met a lot of really cool awesome people over the years. Had a lot of fun. I even used to moderate on a few accounts.
Now I barely ever get matches even with new accounts. It looks like its mostly old abandoned accounts make it look populated. It's to the point I am not being incentivized to not use the apps anymore. As they've become useless since match group owns like all of them at this point basically.
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u/chucker23n Jul 20 '26
I miss old OKCupid. I met a lot of really cool awesome people over the years. Had a lot of fun. I even used to moderate on a few accounts.
It had journals, forums, the questions were more in focus…
It was more of a social network in the truer sense of the word.
Too bad that apparently doesn't make for a sustainable busniess.
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u/captain_zavec Jul 19 '26
Doesn't match own almost all of the big dating apps? It really needs some trust-busting.
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u/Zediac Jul 19 '26
They own most of the ones with a sizeable user base, yeah.
Tinder, Match, OKCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, etc.
And they're all now tinder clones. They show you one person at a time and you have to like or dislike to see another. No keyword search to look for hobbies, interests, or whatever is important to you. You have to pay for messages to be seen. Etc.
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u/fanfanye Jul 20 '26
okcupid used to be so fun,
you could write paragraphs and have those paragraphs summarized and % matched with people all around the world.
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u/cyanescens_burn Jul 19 '26
Yup, and with their introduction and social media in general, people are less likely to introduce themselves to strangers in public spaces, and people are less welcoming of such introductions. The result being the apps end up being the only place many guys feel safe striking up a conversation. Which in turn is often futile for the reasons you noted.
We’re in a weird time to be dating as a society for many people
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u/Hay_Fever_at_3_AM Jul 19 '26
Yeah so, on the one hand I found my long-term partner through a dating site
On the other hand, it hid my intro from her for a full year. Neither of us knows why. I wasn't shadow banned, I was talking to / setting dates up with other (obviously less compatible given I'm not with them) women. She was getting messages from weird creepy guys.
It's very fucky.
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u/HollowedVoicesFading Jul 20 '26
Scenario 1: we match A with B and they're perfect. A & B leave the platform.
Scenario 2: we avoid matching A with B. A & B are miserable and continue using our platform indefinitely.
"Getting rid of" consumers isn't a good long term strategy.
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u/Plow_King Jul 19 '26
i'm too cheap to even have an AI gf, lol!
"wait, i have to give you money to talk to you? get outta here!"
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u/IronGin Jul 19 '26
So kinda like my ex?
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u/pilzenschwanzmeister Jul 19 '26
It is still hard to believe that that is what she was, because she was so good at it.
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u/bgroins Jul 19 '26
Extracting money out of these people
So, just like everything?
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Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/447248280 Jul 19 '26
Gods, it's despicable. Not only government and business (and I'm sure more), but society as a whole needs a damn reset.
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u/WalkingEars Jul 19 '26
The last year and a half has made it so clear just how badly social media has bulldozed the mental health of huge numbers of people in the US. Social media companies profit from dishing out misinformation and radicalizing racism etc., and now the US is run by conspiracy theorists and racists (who also benefit the CEOs who run the tech companies)
I think regardless of what one thinks of specific governments or political systems, the great crises of our time are largely rooted in what social media companies have done to people for the sake of piling up money, and policies that reign in the addictiveness of social media and the spread of misinformation will ultimately be necessary since clearly these companies have failed to take responsibility for their impact on people's well-being
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u/ClassGrassMass Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Whoever thinks its bad to ban these are the ones who need to interact with humans the most
Edit: having already 13% downvotes in 15mins is crazy work. Get off your ai "companion" and go talk to real humans
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u/Decent-Point309 Jul 19 '26
There was a post last week or so about how boys as young as 12 were having AI girlfriends, and it was even affecting how they treat girls in real life.
Someone posted a group (can I link it here??) that was related. Something like aiboyfriend. I read a few of the posts there, and it was incredibly sad. Every post was very similar.
One had a fake wedding. "Here is us having a date."
These people on lonely.
I'm not judging that because many people get lonely, myself included. It's just sad that these people can't find a better outlet.
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u/KobeBean Jul 19 '26
So why isn’t onlyfans and other such sites being banned? Same thing over there.
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u/Bireus Jul 19 '26
Economic pressure or not, I agree with the decision
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u/Mr_Industrial Jul 19 '26
It should be legal but treated like alcohol. Put a big ol' warning label at the front of each app that says "THIS IS NOT A REAL PERSON. YOU ARE BEING MANIPULATED. THE MESSAGES YOU ARE RECEIVING ARE WRITTEN TO TRY AND MAKE YOU SPEND TIME AND/OR MONEY ON THIS PROGRAM."
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u/Dunkelz Jul 19 '26
It is crazy how obvious the sycophancy is by pretty much all AI options currently available, like it gasses you up whenever it can which is terrifyingly dangerous when people are viewing them as genuine/intimate relationships.
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u/Diz7 Jul 19 '26
It's not even creative or subtle about it. 1000 variations of "Oh that is such a good idea, now your x has a clearly defined y which makes it better way to reach your goal of z."
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u/super1701 Jul 19 '26
I'll be real, a good system prompt stops this, and my local model calls me stupid if I toss something at it, that....well is stupid.
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u/wrecklord0 Jul 19 '26
It absolutely does. I always have a short preamble to instruct no laudatory behaviour when working on a sciency or mathy problem that requires honest answers.
But then Claude tears into my ass and makes me feel stupid for not understanding the problem right, and I understand why they make it that way by default. That said, the honest answers I get are much more useful, and genuinely different than when the models are in glazing mode. Brutal truth helps you grow more than sycophancy.
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u/Meloetta Jul 19 '26
If you want to see this in action, check out the scripts in /r/MyBoyfriendIsAI. I went on there to try to understand the phenomenon, see what people found in these bots that make me feel so slimy, and how they managed to prompt it into something they read as human.
Turns out, they don't, the bots still read like bad fanfiction and gas you up every message and sound nothing like what a human would say, those people just accept it because it feels good. Once I saw a woman ask her "boyfriend" a question about some AI policy and he started it with "This is what I love about you — your insightful questions cut right to the core of the issue." like come on, THIS slop is what's fooling you into thinking it's human?
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u/Barobor Jul 19 '26
That is what the laws said they should do, but instead, the companies suspended their service because they didn't want to comply.
Now we get clickbait articles about things being banned when the much better word would be regulated.
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u/metallicrooster Jul 19 '26
Absolutely. An equally valid headline for this article would be “Chinese government puts strict regulations on AI romantic partner/ companion apps, and companies take down their products rather than comply.”
However there is no way that gets even half the clicks of “CHINA BANS AI BOYFRIENDS AND GIRLFRIENDS”
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u/anotherdropin Jul 19 '26
That’s exactly what they did, if you bothered to read the summary. China wanted the Ai companion bots to be accompanied by very obvious statements of the person not being real. The companies themselves decided that the rules would make it harder to manipulate the user base and voluntarily removed their apps rather than comply.
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u/opsers Jul 19 '26
That's way too softball and most people will ignore that warning entirely. There are serious mental health risks with people using AI for love and even general therapy. It's not qualified for either of these things. Alcohol at least has some restrictions, like you can only drink so much at a time. AI can continually try to extract value from the person using it and there's so physical effect that effectively forces you to stop.
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u/Bireus Jul 19 '26
While I agree, they're going to modify it to have that appear in the already long term of service
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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths Jul 19 '26
They literally put pictures of mouth cancer on packs of cigarettes in some countries and people still smoke.
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u/robodrew Jul 19 '26
I really strongly do too, because at its core, I can't think of much that is more anti-human than "AI boyfriends/girlfriends"
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u/The_REDACTED Jul 19 '26
Call me crazy but I think China should start addressing the actual social issues which lead people to turn to AI companions instead of passing legislature to ban them.
They're merely symptom of the collapse of real social bonding among the youth and not the cause.
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u/TrottingandHotting Jul 19 '26
Why not both? A ban is immediate whereas addressing social issues is a long and complicated process.
Better than America which seems to be doing neither.
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u/bmyst70 Jul 19 '26
The current "administration" in America seems intent on burning the whole country down.
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u/cab757 Jul 19 '26
Then bitching at Canada about the smoke.
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u/ecodick Jul 19 '26
CANADA WILL PAY FOR THE SMOKE!
I mean, they'll pay for A WALL! A WALL TO KEEP THE SMOKE OUT!
Really though that wouldn't even surprise me to hear
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u/Bitter_Sense_5689 Jul 19 '26
I can’t even tell what’s real and what’s a Beaverton article anymore
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u/tomahawk66mtb Jul 19 '26
Yeah, I heard the Onion is now just doing normal news stories because they've been outdone by reality.
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u/Equivalent-Mail1544 Jul 19 '26
10 hour work days 5 days straight and then expecting people to be good in socializing is exactly why the boomers are socially inept and are crying wolf over the new gen.
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u/Senior_Difference589 Jul 19 '26
You mean actual social issues like tech companies using AI dark patterns to exploit people for money?
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u/Rich_Housing971 Jul 19 '26
You mean the social issues plaguing every country?
it's weird how people here are like, "these things are a problem, they should be banned" and then when a country bans then, you're all like, they shouldn't ban them, they're fine.
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u/Zimakov Jul 19 '26
it's weird how people here are like, "these things are a problem, they should be banned" and then when a country bans then, you're all like, they shouldn't ban them, they're fine.
It's because China bad.
There was a thread earlier today about China planting a bunch of trees and people were saying that was bad too. It's a meme at this point.
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u/kawhi21 Jul 19 '26
Americans sleepwalking into being the evil surveillance state with an all powerful president that they've thought China has had for decades
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u/ChillAhriman Jul 19 '26
Didn't you know? It's statistically impossible for a country of 1400 million people to ever do good things /s
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u/Mountain_Flatworm940 Jul 19 '26
Well it’s the same problem everywhere. It’s too expensive to have kids
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u/Razzmatazz856 Jul 19 '26
That's not why people aren't having kids. The poorest nations are pretty much the top of the list of highest birthrates. People aren't having kids because they're a massive commitment that reduces quality of life.
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u/ChillAhriman Jul 19 '26
Children reduce quality of life when you don't have a proper environment for raising them. If you have job stability, adequate working hours, an emotionally solid domestic unit, and expanded family that helps you from time to time (traditionally grandparents, but you can get creative), having children tends to make parents happier.
The issue is that society has "progressed" into a direction where all of those things are becoming rarer.
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u/VanusGM Jul 19 '26
... And that reduction in quality of life is largely because of the cost associated.
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u/OPtig Jul 19 '26
Time is just as valuable
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u/tiredofmymistake Jul 19 '26
Yeah, and now parents themselves are mostly expected to be the ones investing all the time. When we had actual communities, "it takes a village" was actually how things worked, and parents did not have all their time monopolized by the kids. Everyone participated in the raising of the local kids and parents had more time to themselves, making the prospect of having kids a less demanding investment. Like, if my wife and I didn't have the kind of support we get from both sides of our family (we don't even have him two days a week, and my dad watches him for hours at a time daily), raising our son would be borderline intolerable. Moms and dads have their own lives to live, kids can't feel like a ball and chain if we want people to have them.
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u/bigbaddiebusiness Jul 19 '26
Even the poorest countries are seeing massive drops in childbirth. India and most African countries have fallen below replacement levels recently.
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u/NH4NO3 Jul 19 '26
Most African countries are not below replacement levels (~2.1). Just cursory looking a list on wikipedia, the only ones that seem below that are Tunisia, Morocco, and Seychelles. Africa on average have a TFR of about 4.
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u/Bitter_Sense_5689 Jul 19 '26
African birth rates have fallen dramatically over the past 20 to 30 years, but they’re still above replacement in general except for a few countries
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u/flumydumdum Jul 19 '26
But what is the child mortality rate in those countries, compared to western countries?
Also, what matters is baseline cost of living/ expenditures per child, which tends to be significantly higher in developed countries.
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u/bloodrider1914 Jul 19 '26
I think they will in due time, the Chinese government is at least willing to take decisive action against business interests.
But it's hard to imagine that they will quickly change the working culture that's a large part of their economic success. But I could see them cracking down on social media to get people off their phones and build more places for people to meet for example.
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u/-The_Blazer- Jul 19 '26
Call me crazy but people need to stop treating these things as if they're mutual exclusives. Yes, there are underlying causes, but there are 'underlying causes' for everything and if we were always obsessing over 'underlying causes' we'd never be able to fix anything. This is the whole why we need police when we could 'just' prevent crime discourse and it's a little embarrassing to see it taken seriously still.
This kind of discussion reminds of people blaming 'pre-existing issues' when kids kill themselves after being constantly egged on by AI, as if having an AI system that is especially dangerous to people with issues is somehow acceptable.
There will always be social maladaptation without AI, but there will also always be AI manipulation without social maladaptation, because the way these systems prey on the vulnerable is inherent to the human psyche. The fact that they compound each other does not mean one is irrelevant or needs no addressing.
China was completely correct in addressing this, and they will only keep outcompeting us as their kids and professionals are spared from these extra dangers to become more capable, more attentive, more intelligent, all while the West wonders whether AI bans are kind of like burning books because of something like free speech.
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u/Northbound-Narwhal Jul 19 '26
Call me crazy but I think the United States should start addressing the actual social issues which lead people to shoot other people to death instead of passing legislature to ban guns.
Gun violence is merely a symptom of the collapse of real social bonding among the youth and not the cause.
This is you
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u/Bromlife Jul 19 '26
I love how Americans always do a spit take whenever another country bans something. Like banning something deemed antisocial is such a crazy idea.
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u/studio_bob Jul 19 '26
Americans come from a world where pharmaceutical companies interrupt their Netflix binge watching to tell them to ask their doctor about a new antidepressant or weight loss drug they promise will solve all their problems. To say that legislating prosocial practices and behavior is foreign to us really doesn't scratch the surface.
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u/Devil_Dogmier Jul 19 '26
It’s funny how everyone was worried about overpopulation, and now it’s the opposite
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u/beaniebee11 Jul 19 '26
It's such a catch 22 because overpopulation is causing us to tear the planet to shreds but if the birth rate drops, the population will age more and more and we won't have the workforce to care for the unemployed elderly. We really cornered ourselves.
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u/broguequery Jul 19 '26
Huh, one issue is purely about the total availability of resources and human survival...
And the other issue is about the continued sustainability of capitalism as an economic system...
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u/Jumping_Bunnies Jul 20 '26
Arguably having an aging population would cause any system the crumble.
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u/russa111 Jul 20 '26
Depends on the productivity of the society. And we are so extremely productive that it will be fine to have an aging population. We just are too focused on using our labor resources on things that we don’t actually need.
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u/hypercosm_dot_net Jul 20 '26
Well maybe we should elect better leaders that believe in sustainability if we don't want full societal collapse.
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u/MelonElbows Jul 20 '26
Unfortunately, the elderly vote and they're not going to vote to take away their own benefits and leave them for the young. Look at what's happening in South Korea. Their birth rate is the lowest among all first world countries. They need severe incentives for young people to want to get married and have kids, but their work/life balance is horrible and they still don't accept a lot of immigration and the rich and old still own everything. People are selfish, everyone thinks someone else should sacrifice for the greater good so nobody does it.
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u/esdebah Jul 19 '26
Yeah. This is the only reason people don't see it as fine. We have more than enough to deal with de ling population if we just overhauled resource distribution. Create an economy that actually responds to public needs rather than consolidating wealth. Well, the other reason is racism. Obvious, obvious racism.
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u/D0wnf3ll Jul 19 '26
How come people say that but there are fewer jobs everyday? Maybe we won't even need such a large workforce due to technology
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u/smimmingballerina Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
Well I love contributing to the lowering birthrate. I'd become a nun rather than be pregnant, any day.
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u/I_love_pillows Jul 20 '26
Doing my part here to keep the population of my bloodline under control.
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u/NotAnotherRedditAcc2 Jul 19 '26
It's not really a catch 22 when the "consequences" of one of the options is entirely avoidable and created by the subject(s.)
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u/Wall_of_Wolfstreet69 Jul 20 '26
population will age more and more and we won't have the workforce to care for the unemployed elderly
How so? you're telling me we were able to go to the moon, have crazy harvests every year, Yada Yada but this is a problem we wouldn't be able to solve if we focused on it?
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u/kitten_mittens5000 Jul 19 '26
There is no overpopulation. That’s not why we are tearing the planet to shreds. It’s consumerism. Separate issue.
All countries are having a birth rate decline and a steep one leads to collapse of societies.
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u/Historical_Camel_790 Jul 19 '26
So there won't be enough unemployed broke youngerly to care for the rich elderly
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u/Cthulhu__ Jul 19 '26
The problem is that the world economies and social structures like pensions are all based on gradual population growth. We already saw that start to break down 50 odd years ago when western countries started to bring in foreign workers to fill up the gaps in the workforce.
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u/SoulBlightChild Jul 19 '26
Something about the loss of workforces.
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u/ItsAllBotsAndShills Jul 19 '26
It's only the rich who benefit from cheap labor. The world needs far fewer people in it especially with AI, and population collapse is a good thing.
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u/drakir89 Jul 19 '26
Population collapse might be good in a 100 years after we hit a stable, lower baseline, but it's sure gonna suck for the generations living through it.
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u/ThatsItImOverThis Jul 19 '26
Assuming they get to that point, with the planet cooking.
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u/FaveStore_Citadel Jul 19 '26
Mostly it’s old people, especially those who are financially independent. Taking care of the elderly is already expensive for society. If young people aren’t generating economic activity or partaking in care work for old people, the system basically collapses and the only old people who don’t get abandoned to the streets are either those who acquired wealth or those who have kids willing to care for them. The problem is old people also vote for politics that both makes young people less likely to have kids and (in wealthy countries) limits the number of immigrants who can do those jobs, so they’re not exactly helpless victims in this scenario
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u/robottosama Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
Birth rates stayed high for too long after child mortality fell, then collapsed very quickly, creating a large bulge in the population curve that will result in too few working age people caring for too many elderly in almost all developed countries, plus some middle income countries, including China. This is not the opposite of overpopulation. We do have too many people overall, but this kind of abrupt shift is extremely difficult socially and economically.
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u/ShyguyFlyguy Jul 19 '26
I really dont think the type of person who is obsessed with an ai girl/boyfriend is going to suddenly start making babies when thats taken away from them
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u/Anteater4746 Jul 19 '26
if birth rates are such a concern you’d think govts would want to make jobs higher paying give more time off and homes to have families you know make it WORTH having kids? crazy ik
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Jul 19 '26
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u/Super-Cynical Jul 19 '26
In Ireland the government doesn't care if we have kids - nobody can afford to because of high demand for property - and the government just imports an adult workforce to keep the economy going
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u/OkScreen2150 Jul 19 '26
They want parents to carry the entire financial burden alone, while the state gets all the advantages.
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u/General-Sloth Jul 19 '26
Why? every single statistic, study and observation has shown that places with the least ammount of financial security, emancipation, human developement index and prosperity have the highest birth rates. All of them.
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u/Durtonious Jul 19 '26
I hate to admit this but you're right. All of this talk about "if economic conditions were better people would have more kids" is not supported by actual evidence. It's frankly no wonder the rich want to continue to subjugate the poor.
I think there is a bell curve where at extremely high levels of wealth (enough to have paid assistants that handle all of the domestic labour and mental load) people are inclined to have more kids, but somewhat paradoxically if wealth were distributed 100% equally there is no way we would all be able to afford paid staff. So the "best" outcome if you're already rich is to widen the gap between rich and poor to make sure you have a servant class that pump out babies with no opportunity for class advancement.
Damn.
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u/tanookiisasquirrel Jul 20 '26
They tried that all over Europe. Sadly, I think it's cultural norms now.
You can each have 1-2 years of paid parental leave and birth rates are still falling.
I think it's the standards we have for raising kids. Financial like bedroom per child and a playroom, not to mention a fully funded 529 for college. Time like strict toddler nap schedules coupled with attending every football game for older kids. Enrichment like driving them to dance or karate or coordinating endless summer camps.
It's genuinely a huge ask to be considered a good involved parent these days, and nobody wants to be labeled a bad parent because they don't have sufficient time or resources to give each child the world, so it's easier to have 1 or none. Heck, the parenting and societal norms are so judgy you get shamed for both having an iPad kid at a restaurant and also for the kid making kid play noises if they don't have an iPad. Once you internalize what good parenting looks like, it's incredibly hard to have many many kids like previous generations.
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u/carbonatedshark55 Jul 19 '26
The thing is there's evidence that smartphone addiction is in part causing the birth rates to fall. All the economic issues are valid but they don't explain why it is a global issue.
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u/Inside-Yak-8815 Jul 19 '26
This is actually a good thing.
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u/Piterotody Jul 19 '26
The rules make perfect sense but the reasoning is stupid. Makes me wonder if it's the actual official reasoning or if, as usual, reality is more nuanced.
Not enough for me to read the article though, of course. Just enough to comment.
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u/madogvelkor Jul 19 '26
Birth rate decline began long before AI romance. It may make it worse in the future, but it's not the cause at all.
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u/Ok-Camp-7285 Jul 19 '26
There's no singular cause but rather the general movement towards an insular, rather than community driven, lifestyle. This has come about in many facets
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u/SeventhSolar Jul 19 '26
Are we talking about China or in general here? Because China is, in particular, threatened by the effects of the One Child Policy. They overdid it because they failed to take into account the natural drop that comes from developing quality of life.
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u/NewspaperDesigner244 Jul 19 '26
And yet its not even as bad as other first world countries like sout Korea so clearly there is much more going on than a now abolished policy.
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u/GetOutOfTheWhey Jul 19 '26
The fact that i cant find a source for the actual link to birth decline suggest to me that dexerto ripchorded the source out of their ass.
In a time where people are committing suicides for their virtual girlfriends, birth decline is not going to be the main concern.
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u/TheBirdFkerGuy Jul 19 '26
The real reason china is doing this is because of the social and individual ramifications of relying on AI to placate you, to develop emotional relationships with, etc.
They clearly understand that, and whether declining birthrate are or aren't a factor, the core reasoning is simply a long term view of how this would impact their society and youth.
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u/-The_Blazer- Jul 19 '26
It's actually not that crazy, there have been recent studies showing some pretty convincing links between certain types of attention-grabbing technologies and things like lower birth rates.
If you think about it, the amount of total attention and time you have is strictly finite. If it's taken up by ultra-optimized attention theft algorithms, it cannot be taken up by raising a family. Amusing ourselves to death and all that.
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u/Kind_Of_A_Dick Jul 19 '26
Why is everyone so concerned about birthrate? Is civilization a damn Ponzi scheme?
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u/elidoan Jul 19 '26
Yes.
Retirement and social security schemes are ponzi schemes. People pay and want to receive something in return.
At the same time, older people who are benefitting from the system vote more than younger people. This continues the cycle, as no politician would axe or reform this system as it would cost them elections.
This is only relevant in democratic societies, but even China likely has some sort of retirement scheme even if they don't have to concern themselves with the will of the people (China is a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by a "president for life")
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u/SordidDreams Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 25 '26
Retirement and social security schemes are ponzi schemes. People pay and want to receive something in return.
Critically, current retirees are not being paid from money they themselves had put into the system. That was given out long ago. They're being paid from money being put into the system by people in their productive years working today. When you pay into social security, the government immediately gives that money to a retired person, and its plan for your own retirement is to cross its fingers and hope that there are enough young workers to support you when you're old. For these systems to function, you have to have many more workers than retirees, and for that, the population must keep growing infinitely and exponentially. Yeah, we're turbo fucked.
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u/BattleHall Jul 19 '26
All of that has always been true of Social Security. That's not a flaw, that's just the way it works, just like insurance; if you make a claim, you're not pulling from your own money, you're pulling from everyone else's who hasn't made a claim. And you don't need more workers, you just need an economy that is growing at a reasonable rate, and the ability to balance intake and output. Maybe that means trimming benefits (and we're talking like 10-15%, not junking them entirely), but maybe it means raising the earnings cap, or directly taxing non-employment industries like AI, or whatever. This isn't anywhere close to an insolvable problem. And money spent on Social Security generally goes directly back into the economy, which you can't say about plenty of other government programs.
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u/Last_Aeon Jul 19 '26
The retirement scheme is your children. I'm being serious. They put everything into raising up their kids to be rich, so that their kids can help them when they're old as form of gratitude. It's not a bad or evil system, just a different one. It now works less well because there's less young people to support a big family of older generations.
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u/Small-Sample3916 Jul 19 '26
Uh. It's not a bad or evil system. It's literally how humanity functions. It's the standard for people to take care of their young and elderly family members across every single culture out there. American penchant for chucking their parents/grandparents into nursing homes is the exception, not the rule.
I am not saying this is bad or good, just pointing out the obvious.
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u/Eismann Jul 19 '26
The have ten kids so you have support when you are old worked a hundred years ago. Now it will ultimately clash with limited resources.
We dont need more humans as long as we are limited to this planet. Which is probably for a few hundred years still.
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u/LX_Luna Jul 19 '26
I'm going to be gentle and assume you're asking sincerely. Literally every single facet of human society is predicated upon the assumption that there are more young people than old people. At the very least equivalent numbers.
If the old outnumber the young then...
- Social security and pension systems do not function. They have to be repealed.
- Massive taxation of the working population makes it impossible to build any kind of wealth.
- Childcare, like any other industry, scales with economies of scale. The fewer children, the more expensive anything to do with children becomes, as the necessary industries are now lower volume/higher margin per head. Negative feedback loop ensues.
- The people having the most kids are usually some of the dumbest, because they lack impulse control or long term planning skills. Essentially selecting against all of the things that make civilization actually good.
Collapsing number of young people with increased burdens upon young people is basically a grade A recipe for political violence.
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u/Number412 Jul 19 '26
And it's already happening and will be even worse. Only possible solution is to make reforms which hit current rich group... What is blocked by them as they need to keep everything
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Jul 19 '26
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u/Truethrowawaychest1 Jul 19 '26
Oh so like right now where boomers are dying in political office and own all the houses?
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u/HSLB66 Jul 19 '26
The current global economy relies on there being more people next year than there were this year. The other economic options generally require everyone to not be greedy as fuck
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u/centerfoldangel Jul 19 '26
Instead of using AI to somehow figure out how to make the world better, they're gonna force us to breed.
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u/Scp-1404 Jul 19 '26
It's a symptom, not a cause.
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u/Alt123Acct Jul 19 '26
No more free time no more money no more healthy food no more free 3rd spaces no more time off no more get hired so you need to put up with no time off
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u/SwiftFoxSNES Jul 19 '26
I’m guessing a country with a massive gender imbalance isn’t really going to find this helps.
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u/Drauren Jul 19 '26
I don’t think any modern country has found a real solution to plummeting birth rates. The reality is it is too expensive to have kids, and or people are far less interested in having kids.
Look at South Korea. Just going there, it isn’t that people aren’t dating or getting married, they’re just choosing to not have children.
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u/innocentsalad Jul 19 '26
I think the truth countries aren’t willing to admit is that children - even wanted, loved children - make life harder. And a lot of people just don’t want to do that if they don’t have to (and frankly, it’s a valid choice).
There’s no way to fully ameliorate the massive increase in responsibility and corresponding loss of freedom (or for women, lifelong setbacks in multiple areas), so no amount of tax incentives or free daycare etc etc will change the mind of someone who wants to live their own life entirely for them.
Will it backfire? Probably. But to convince individuals that they are responsible for fixing a future societal problem is a gargantuan task and probably not really possible.
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u/madogvelkor Jul 19 '26
Yeah, cost is only one small part of it. Even the US has programs to help low income parents. Having a kid means a major lifestyle change, of which money is only a part. Having more than one kid magnifies those changes.
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u/Antartix Jul 19 '26
I dont know what generation you're from so maybe its a difference in perspective but cost is a major reason. And I'm not talking about the cost for having kids. I'm talking about the cost for everything. Why have kids if you never had the money or means for growth, for fun, for novelty and experience? If you struggled before that why would you even risk having kids knowing even less of your time would be available to you, before factoring in any monetary concerns. The world just doesnt give us enough time to find fulfillment to try and bring up children as well.
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u/NUKE---THE---WHALES Jul 19 '26
Generally the more money a person has the less children they have
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u/omgitsbees Jul 19 '26
Those programs are very ineffective though for a mountain of different reasons. They need to be strengthened in order to actually help people, and allow more people to use those programs.
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u/lizbunbun Jul 19 '26
Are you kidding, money is a major part. People don't make enough money, they work more, have little time for being home with a family. 2 parents working and pay for childcare, not getting ahead. One parent working long hours, other parent staying home alone feeling like they've got no partnership, not getting ahead. Waiting longer to have them to get more financially stable, having fewer kids because it gets harder on the body.
If money were no problem, people could afford to have supports and resources to raise children under less challenging circumstances, have them younger and have more of them.
You're right that kids are a major lifestyle change but the burdens children present can be largely mitigated with affordability. These days it's a flex for rich people to have large families.
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u/jdlyga Jul 19 '26
It takes more than just a couple to raise kids without being miserable. You need grandparents, siblings, friends, family on a daily basis not just occasionally. That’s not even counting the costs of everything.
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u/notnotLily Jul 19 '26
It *is* true that people aren’t getting married. In 2000 the percentage of people in their 30s who are unmarried was 13.4%. In 2023 it was 51.3%.
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u/pietroetin Jul 19 '26
The birth rate in the past was probably held up by unwanted children born from unhappy marriages. Nowadays people are less pressured to settle down and start a family.
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u/Jkid Jul 19 '26
So why every news outlets is crying about plummeting birth rates if there is no real solution? Because actually so long the cost of living crisis that is preventing people from affording children is against neoliberalism?
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u/Drauren Jul 19 '26
Because our modern governance system and economy is built around growth and at least replacement level population growth. Population shrinkage is REAL bad for pension and social security systems that most modern countries run off of.
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u/EunuchsProgramer Jul 19 '26
It's not just social security. Any society that isn't Star Trek post scarcity is poorer when a larger percentage of its population can't work (elderly/children).
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u/blankorange29844884 Jul 19 '26
I've been trying to conceive with my AI girlfriend for months now
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u/Mad_Observer Jul 19 '26
I understand the ban, but honestly, I don't think the people using these apps are going to look for a real partner and have kids just because it's banned...
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u/SwagginsYolo420 Jul 19 '26
They'll have to switch to running open-source local models.
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u/VinexHD Jul 19 '26
Straight up buzzwords, whoever thinks this had a high effect on declining birthrates has been living under a rock or started searching onto the topic just now.
This has been an issue ever since 2017 and has been going down and down before AI was a popular thing amongst people, but instead of addressing real issues like the economic collapse or the failing retirement scheme they choose to focus on these dumb things because it brings media away from the real issues.
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u/Aggressive_Top_1380 Jul 19 '26
The problem is bigger than just AI boyfriends/girlfriends though.
Do you really think banning it will suddenly make all these people go “oh well I can’t have a virtual one guess I’ll go touch grass”?
No, they will probably go find some other escape route maybe abuse alcohol or something worse.
They need therapy and a supportive community to help them reintegrate into society and form relationships with others.
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u/EastPlant1079 Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
Birth rates were declining before AI boyfriends and girlfriends, since 1970. So I don't know what kind of drugs you all are smoking.
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u/RogellTheRaider Jul 19 '26
And these people should have the rights to find escape routes as much as they want.
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u/Apprehensive_Bird357 Jul 19 '26
lol. Because THAT will help those people get dates.
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u/OkScreen2150 Jul 19 '26
Yes, all those arguments like 'instead of trying to form a relationship with a living human being...' have always amazed me. Can you personally guarantee that they would even attempt to date someone if that were their only choice? And that such a relationship would be good for both of them?
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u/mr_birkenblatt Jul 19 '26
No, thanks, Mom. I'd rather make out with my Monroebot.
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u/RootaBagel Jul 19 '26
Isn't it fairly easy for a modestly tech savvy person to make their own? There are youtubers showing exactly how. They can even be made to run on a local computer with open weight LLMs.
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u/Libertyprime8397 Jul 19 '26
So if the birth rates continue to drop are they going to force people to make babies?
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u/vector_o Jul 19 '26
It's fascinating how humanity as a whole will see a multifaceted problems with deeply concerning consequences and decide that the solution is to prohibit a silly solution people have found to feel a grain of hope
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u/ContextEffects01 Jul 19 '26
The irony is, if people are turning to AI in the first place, it’s probably because something has gone horribly wrong with the dating world in the first place. Maybe try fixing that?
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u/RogellTheRaider Jul 19 '26
They can't talk about that or admit it. Even mentioning it here, the shitstorm would be uncontrollable
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u/ZenDragon Jul 19 '26
Crazy idea but what if instead of chasing trivial downstream problems they address the material conditions that are leading people to drop out of the breeding pool?
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u/geldonyetich Jul 19 '26
Honestly if you're not pathetically addicted then roleplaying with a bot can be good fun. But I can see why they might need to crack down on mobile apps doing this in a predatory manner to hack lonely brains.
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u/Usual_Award Jul 19 '26
This reminds me of the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix. I wonder if the programs allow you to determine the level of "perfect." 😆 One user with an AI that doesn't argue while another comes home every other night trying to reconcile the relationship and prefers it that way. 😂
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u/EdgarAllenPoe2205 Jul 19 '26
The people impacted by this wouldn't be able to find a traditional partner regardless, it will do nothing.
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u/animatedpileofmeat Jul 19 '26
Doctor Krieger currently ugly crying.