Min-soo and Ji-young Kim are 67 and 65 years old respectively.
They live in Incheon, South Korea. They don’t have children. They never felt like they could afford them.
Both were lucky enough to work through the AI revolution of the 2030s. Min-soo as a logistics coordinator and Ji-young as a care provider.
But for these zoomers (people born between 1997 and 2012), the future looks grim.
For one thing, they won’t be retiring anytime soon. South Korea raised the statutory retirement age to 75 back in 2048 to ease pressure on the collapsing pension system. Even so, their payouts will be minimal.
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The National Pension Fund, once one of the largest in the world, was depleted a decade ago. Their private savings were never enough, squeezed by rising costs and a lifetime of economic anxiety.
Their neighborhood is quieter now. Most of their peers moved to the megacities or passed away. Schools nearby are shuttered. Buses run less frequently. What used to be a bustling urban hub is slowly turning into a ghost town.
And they are the lucky ones.
The Kims’ story is a glimpse into South Korea’s future—and possibly the future of much of the world.
What’s the cause?
Global warming? War? Artificial Intelligence?
Actually, it’s far simpler. We are just not having enough children.
For a population to remain stable, you need 2.1 children per woman.
But South Korea’s fertility rate stands at just 0.75. By 2060, the country’s population is projected to shrink by 30% and half of that population will be over 65.
Without interventions, the working-age population will collapse. The tax base will erode. Economic growth will reverse. Culture will stagnate.
And this isn’t just a Korean issue. China, Japan, Italy, Spain, and even the U.S. are all trending in the same direction. Demographic winter is arriving faster than most policymakers are willing to admit.
So how do we circumvent this ageing armageddon?
The most obvious is for governments to incentivize their populations to have more kids. But it turns out people are complicated and the various incentives governments have offered in the past, such as direct payouts, tax reductions, education and housing benefits, haven’t made a difference.
So, if we can’t find ways to increase the production of humans, which has been the historical path to growth, what are the alternatives?
Well, one is to remove the numbers of those that are dependent. And as unthinkable as this is, it will likely happen naturally if we cannot solve this supply and demand problem.
But there is a third option. And that is to increase production without humans. Or put another way, to do the things that we used to do with machines.
And the technology that is opening this possibility is obviously artificial intelligence.
The theory is simple.
AI will eventually go beyond human-level intelligence.
Digital agents won’t simply write code. They will make decisions and carry out tasks that humans used to be paid to do. And if we can do this in a world where clean energy becomes abundant, then production costs start trending towards zero.
In this more utopian future, Min-soo still works in logistics, but he’s no longer stuck juggling spreadsheets or calling drivers. His main agent, FreightBot, tracks shipments in real time, automatically reroutes deliveries when there’s traffic or weather delays, and negotiates the cheapest delivery rates with different couriers. It even sends alerts to customers and reschedules deliveries when no one is home.
And Ji-young is supported by MediAgent, a virtual assistant that checks in with patients daily via chat, tracks their vitals through wearable devices, and flags potential issues before they become emergencies. It also books appointments, fills prescriptions, and updates medical records—all while staying fully compliant with regulations.
They don’t have to micromanage these agents. They train them once, set guardrails, and the agents take it from there.
In this future, Min-Soo and Ji-Young only work a few hours a week. Which gave them the time and financial security to have a family and spend time with both their children and grandchildren.
If we want a world where family and community really do come first, then governments have a difficult road ahead of them.
They’ll need to help whole populations navigate a world where technology doesn’t just change how we work—it changes whether we work at all.
Because we’re heading toward a future where unemployment may rise not from collapse, but from success. And for the first time in history, we may need to ask: what if fewer jobs could be a good thing?
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