The global population could fall from over 8 billion today to just 100 million by 2300.
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Robots don’t need to rise up and destroy humanity; we might just fade away on our own.
That’s the message from Subhash Kak, a tech professor at the University of Oklahoma, who believes artificial intelligence could play a major role in a sort of quiet collapse of human civilisation.
In an interview with The Sun, Kak talks about a future where major cities are abandoned, birth rates quickly drop, and only 100 million people are left on the planet. Not through war or disease, but through a global decision to stop having children.
“Robots will never be conscious, but they will be doing literally all that we do because most of what we do in our lives can be replaced,” Kak says.
Birth rates around the world are falling
According to Kak, we’re already seeing the early warning signs. Faced with economic instability and a tech-dominated job market, many people — especially in developed countries — are deciding that having children just doesn’t make sense anymore.
That is already seen in the real world, says Kak:
- The EU hit its lowest fertility rate of the century in 2023.
- Japan recorded its lowest birth rate in 125 years.
- China’s population is shrinking for the third year in a row.
- South Korea has the lowest birth rate in the world.
These aren’t temporary problems, Kak argues: they’re part of a deeper, possibly irreversible trend.
Collapse of our world by the year 2300?
If the decline continues at its current pace, Kak predicts that by the year 2300 — or maybe 2380 — the global population could fall from over 8 billion today to just 100 million.
That’s less than the current population of Mexico, Russia or Vietnam, and barely double Spain’s 2025 estimate.
“Cities like New York and London will become deserted ghost towns,” the professor told The Sun. “The world will be devastated. I think people really don’t have a clue.”
And unlike those dystopian stories where machines overthrow us with violence, Kak believes the real threat is much more silent: a kind of voluntary extinction, powered by comfort.
The risk in the AI era
In his book called The Age of Artificial Intelligence, Kak explores this vision deeply. He doesn’t deny AI’s benefits, such as convenience, automation, and productivity gains.
But he warns of some existential dilemmas we haven’t even begun to address.
With AI already everywhere, Kak believes our society may move away from nature and even from each other. And, according to him, that could mean fewer families, weakened communities and collapsing institutions.
So, if we agree with Kak, the AI age is not about killer robots, but more about losing our will to carry on.
And those of us still around in 2300? We’ll see.
