Ok, Boomer: 2044 the year of AI
‘Ok, Boomer’ has become a phrase that is used as a retort for perceived resistance to technological change, climate change denial, or opposition to younger generations’ opinions.
But it might be the demise of Boomers that will make AI indispensable.
So before any younger generation calls the wrong generation a Boomer lets do a quick refresher:
- Baby Boomers (born from 1946 to 1964)
- Generation X (born from1965 to 1980)
- Millennial Generation (born from 1981 to 1996)
- Gen Z (post-Millennial) (born from 1997 to 2012)
Imagine this scenario:
In 2044, numerous life insurance companies will go insolvent after paying out an extensive amount of claims. The housing market will have a glut of homes going unsold or sitting empty. The energy grid will be overexposed as everything including transportation depends on electricity. Social Security in the United States will be limping along because it will rely on other funding methods such as payroll taxes even after the Social Security Trust Fund was depleted in 2033.
This “Boomer Bomb” means that the Baby Boomer generation will start to pass away in large numbers by the year 2037 and steadily increase until it’s climax in 2044.
With the younger generations who will still be dealing with student debt, inflation, and high rent prices might choose to simply walk away from these properties because they have no money to pay the taxes. Or have no money from life insurance pay outs because of their parents healthcare bills or long term care.
If so, a couple of things might happen:
- Over inventory of houses makes it a buyers market or creates a worse housing market crash than the one in 2008.
- Squatters in unoccupied houses, condos within neighborhoods will become a national crisis as it is currently in Atlanta, Georgia
- Massive employment shortages as as not enough positions are filled by those that boomers held.
The US is not alone.
China’s population dropped by 2.08 million, more than twice the drop in 2022. China ended 2023 with 1.410 billion people, the National Bureau of Statistics said Wednesday, down from 1.412 billion in 2022. By 2001 to 2011, India’s population has slowed to 1.5%. According to UN projections, India’s population is expected peak at about 1.7 billion in 2064.
This is not the first time we have predicted that the sky is falling due to a literal lack of humanity.
In 1798 Thomas Robert Malthus famously predicted that living standards would inevitably be undermined as human population growth outstripped food production. 200 years later, since Malthus’s time, incomes per person averaged around the world have increased despite a population increase from around 800 million in 1798 to 8.1 billion today.
Some economists argue that rising populations have been a major cause of increased living standards, rather than the opposite. This also means the increase in population since 1798 has also raised the number of geniuses. Economists state that it’s geniuses that propel human progress.
Other than making babies with Elon Musk (father of eleven including all wives, ex-wives and employees), what genius can help humanity survive beyond the baby boomer generation?
Artificial intelligence.
The hype that AI is going to take your job has been overstated. The time frame for AI to become mature enough to take human jobs will be the same time that millions of humans will be retiring or expiring out of the workforce.
We have less than ten years to use AI on finding ways to keep Social Security alive.
We have at least one decade head start to prevent under employment by using Robot Process Automation to complete repetitive tasks where humans aren’t necessarily needed.
We have fifteen year jump on complicated problems such as keeping insurance and financial service companies solvent. Or to how to simplify and scale a potential overused electrical grid. Or even more pressing, solving climate change. Or preventing the next pandemic.
All the while AI also has to work to prevent human society from fragmenting due to misinformation, deep fakes, and hallucinations.
And most importantly AI needs to help us humans find enough leisure time in the next two decades to make babies to re-populate Earth.
Ok, Boomer. AI can’t replace you.
But we do need AI to prevent the world you left us from crashing down.
