A Hong Kong lawmaker has said the rise of “obedient and caring” virtual partners generated by artificial intelligence is partly to blame for the city’s low birth rate, noting such digital companions offer emotional support and lack interpersonal conflicts.
Legislator William Wong Kam-fai, who is also a computational linguistics professor, called on the government to promote “happy learning” in schools and lower the income threshold for public housing to encourage more people to have children.
Wong spoke at a motion debate during a Legislative Council meeting on Thursday that centred on how to encourage more childbirths, conceding it was difficult to reverse trends of people staying unmarried and having no children.
“The younger generation would rather keep pets than have children, and now there is also the new challenge of AI companions,” he told the legislature.
Wong, who is part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s systems engineering and engineering management department, said that technology companies had launched “obedient and caring” AI companions to address the needs of single people.
“These virtual partners not only know how to provide emotional value, but also save [the users] from the troubles of interpersonal conflicts. Their attraction [to people] is self-evident,” he said.
