In my opinion, it mostly comes down to contraception and changing lifestyle choices. Most child-free people I know simply prefer not to have kids.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if, within a few decades, the dominant concern swings back toward "overpopulation" as major advances significantly slow or reverse aging.
It was a surprise to OpenAI too. ChatGPT was essentially a demo app to showcase their API, it was not meant to be a mass consumer product. When you think about it, ChatGPT is a pretty awkward product name, but they had to stick with it.
This reminds me of a trip to Guilin when I was an athletic 22-year-old. We'd booked a hotel on top of a mountain that was only reachable by hiking up a trail. At the trailhead, a five-foot-tall grandma offered to carry my luggage to the top. I thought it was funny — and a bit insulting — so I refused. About a quarter of the way up, I gave up and let her take it. She carried it all the way up without breaking a sweat. It was more a feat of endurance than pure strength, but still incredibly impressive.
A couple years ago, I did a 90 mile hike in Scotland, which was mostly flat. My pack weighed just at 20-25lb (light but not ultralight - a lot of water weight). The trail was MOSTLY flat, with a couple steep trails to bypass forestry work, and crest over some steep hill.
I'm a large man, at the time I was pushing 250lb on a 5'8" frame, but I found my flat land endurance was basically unlimited at walking pace. My uphill endurance was limited so short bursts, and I had to regularly stop for a breather.
Once on flat ground, again, 20+ miles a day no issues.
After the detours, and some one-off side trails to see something, and walking from the trail to a town for food and/or sleep, my entire trek was 125mi over 5 days. And when I got home, I weighed 255lb. I gained 5lb while hiking somehow.
All that to say, uphill endurance is no joke, and it is hard to train, even maxed on a treadmill if you live on flat ground. Stair climbing (or machine) is the only thing I can think of.
Related, it's wild what the porters on the Inca Trail carry. Both the weight and the pace they move. We'd get up and start hiking after breakfast, the porters pack up camp, start hiking 30-60 min after us, fly-by us mid-morning, and have a cooked lunch ready by the time we get to the lunch spot. Repeat again for dinner/night. The trail itself isn't technically challenging, just lots of elevation gain/loss each day and at a high enough altitude to make unacclimatized people feel pretty bad.
I was hiking in Nepal a couple years ago. I regularly saw porters carrying 85kg (187 lbs) of wood on there backs up the mountain trails (pic I took: https://imgur.com/a/ahJhoi9). I asked my Nepali guide how much he can carry, and he said "I can carry you!" I'm 195cm (6'5"), and weighed about 120kg (264 lbs) at the time, and this guy was maybe half my size. I told him to prove it, so he asked me to get on his back, which I did, and then he picked me up and started running. Crazy strong.
Altitude can be a huge limiting factor. I biked from Texas to Oregon, and the first days in the Rockies were brutal. It seemed I could barely travel 50 feet up hill without taking a break. I even considered turning around because it just felt impossible.
African women often carry a 25l water can on their heads which is 25kg/52pounds. Often they have another 25kgs in one hand. They navigate narrow paths up and down hills, duck under branches without spilling a drop. Usually maintaining a casual conversation the whole time with whoever they are with.
Only epakai has mentioned altitude so far. I’m athletic and once took a cable car up to 5000m. At the top I started walking on the flat trail and was out of breath in a minute or two and had to stop.
There are two notable differences between when the AGI-posters do it and when IRC-posters do it. AGI-posters extend their lowercase posting to what would normally be seen as more formal communication. They also tend to stick to using punctuation despite the lowercase. IRC posters usually keep it to informal communications, where it's a sign of casualness. That said, there is overlap, and it's of course not possible to instantly distinguish someone as a Sama devotee because of how they type; but it is clear that a lot of people in that bubble are intentionally adopting the style.
Me? I'd be very surprised if they can actually read encrypted messages (without pushing a malicious client update). The odds that no one at Meta would blow the whistle seem low, and a backdoor would likely be discovered by independent security researchers.
I'd be surprised as well. I know people who've worked on the WhatsApp apps specifically for years. It feels highly unlikely that they wouldn't have come across this backdoor and they wouldn't have mentioned it to me.
If there is such a back door, it would hardly follow it's widely known within the company. From the sparse reports on why Facebook/Meta has been caught doing this in the past, it's for favor trading and leverage at the highest levels.
It might be a mic issue but my wife, who is a native speaker, seems to get most characters wrong. I will try again later in a quieter place
to see if that helps.
That said, I wouldn't be surprised if, within a few decades, the dominant concern swings back toward "overpopulation" as major advances significantly slow or reverse aging.
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