The Corporate Profit from Human Extinction

$500,000 or ₹4 crore. That’s around how much a dead body is worth on the black market. Why do I know this? 🎶🎵Don’t ask questions; you don’t wanna know.🎵🎶

Knowledge grows when shared, so I’ll tell you a secret. The number mentioned above was just an estimation found on Google. Actual numbers may vary depending on your buyer. 👀

The average monthly salary hovers around ₹30,000 per month. This means that over an average life where an individual begins working at the age of 20 years, a person earns a minimum of ₹1.4 crore.

So, when a company comes around offering eternal life, how much would you pay for it? Would you even believe that freedom from death would be achievable?

Well, believe it or not, more than “a few” companies are making headway in metaverse tech. Now, you might wonder, “How does metaverse equate to immortality?”

Fret not, and read on as we dive into the metaverse, its major players, and how this simulated or augmented reality might become the only one for the human race.

The Fault in our Genes

At 7.98 billion people, overpopulation seems to be a global threat to the human species. However, overpopulation is a way smaller threat when compared to the oncoming population collapse predicted by many researchers.

Globally, as of 2019, 40% of the human population lived in a country with a replacement rate of less than 2.1 children per woman. As of 2021, this share has jumped to 60%.

The low replacement rates mentioned above are observed in western countries with better wealth, income distribution, and easier access to improved healthcare infrastructure.

Countries like Madagascar have a fertility rate of nearly 4.03 births per woman. Poorer countries and geographies tend to have a higher population as children are seen as hands that help with chores. Plus, without a proper source of entertainment, people are more likely to… you know?

With a rate of 1.7 children per woman, richer countries like the USA are experiencing a fall in the fertility rate as more and more individuals experience a better quality of life and are not driven by the need to reproduce to ensure the survival of their race.

The aforementioned tokophobia (fear of childbirth) is prevalent in India as well. Seems the youth of India really does not want to give its family a chirag!

Now here’s a little shocker for all of you afflicted by the “baby fever”. Humans wish to reproduce or are positively biased towards the process to ensure that we do not pull a “panda” and become too lazy to procreate.

So why are people going from “Hum do, Humare do” to “Nahi chahiye, Rehne do”? To better understand this phenomenon, think of human beings as folders, with each folder having a limited lifespan storage space.

Reproduction is an attempt at creating a somewhat similar copy of each folder before the parent folder runs out of time. But as the duration allotted to each folder grows with progress in science, the need to reproduce goes down.

This is why the average number of children has gone from 5.9 children per woman to 2.0 children per woman, as the average life expectancy in India has increased from 41.42 years to 69.66 years from 1960 to 2021.

Continuing the folder idea, imagine if our minds could be uploaded to achieve eternal life. As our life expectancy inceases to, well… infinite, our need to reproduce would hit zero.

Consciousness on Cloud (Nine)

Now wait, don’t get all sci-fi and think of a reality where human consciousness is inside a server instead of a living, breathing body. Let’s understand the concept that could lead to such a development first. Neural Network is the name of the game, and we’re about to get playing!

$10.3 billion- that is the market size of the Deep Neural Network as of 2021. The DNN market is expected to grow at a whopping CAGR of 51.1% to reach $415 billion by 2030.

Neural Network is a branch of Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning where technology is used to recreate real human thinking. It takes problems as inputs and creates various outputs to achieve the most rewarding results. These outputs are then assigned weights based on which decisions would most likely be chosen by “real” humans (a bit of an oxymoron with the current state of social media).

These are some of the more popular players in the neural network ecosystem. You may have interacted with one or more of them. Here’s a list of these companies, in no particular order:

• Amazon Web Service
• Google
• AMD
• Huawei Technologies
• IBM
• Intel
• Qualcomm
• Microsoft
• Nvidia
• Samsung

With Neural networks, the human thought process can be emulated by tech. The process is emulated by turning human decision-making into two-dimensional output-based decisions without any consideration of emotions or other human aspects.

In its current state, however, Neural Network makes tech act like the human brain. A neural network is a replacement for the human brain, not a place to store it and its abilities. Thus, an uploaded human is still a ways away.

However, as far as tech is concerned, human emotions or personality traits are the least relevant concerns. If we are talking about the evolution of the human race, and eternal life is at stake, would you not trade off a little emotion for that?

Now you might be wondering why Meta, one of the first movers in the “uploaded lifestyle” environment, is not on the list. Well, let us find out where Meta got lost in the matrix.

Meta: A False Head-start

The beginning of 2022 marked the creation of a very science fiction-heavy buzzword in the world of finance. Metaverse.

The augmented reality world is meant to elevate virtual reality, a popular phenomenon in modern video games. Metaverse was set to turn virtual into reality.

Meta Platforms, the parent company of the social networking site Facebook, owns many companies. Messenger, Meta Portals and Facebook Watch are a few. Another “Meta-owned-Monster” company is Reality Labs.

Now, Reality Labs might not ring a bell, but I am sure Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest do. These were the names of the headsets released by the company Oculus, which was acquired by Meta (then Facebook) in the year 2014.

Reality Labs posted a loss of $10.2 billion for FY2021. This loss must have stung Meta a  little extra as it announced that Reality Labs would declare its revenues independently from the rest of Facebook’s bouquet of apps in October 2021.

As of the day of writing this article, Meta share prices have experienced ~60%, causing an erosion worth $71 billion in CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth. As a result, Meta is looking to freeze hiring, a 180 from its attitude in late 2021, when it was looking to grow its workforce to build on the hype around Metaverse.

The hiring freeze is a way to reduce costs as the general popularity of Metaverse, and Web3 technology died down in the few months succeeding its release. A first in the 18 years since its conception.

Blaming continued financial instability, the CEO stated that 2023 would see the company as grow “somewhat smaller”. This casts a cloud of uncertainty over the 89,200 employees currently on Meta’s payroll.

When Metaverse was the centre of the hype, however, the idea had taken a few baby steps. Although the applications were mostly around gaming and entertainment, Metaverse had businesses in the form of casinos and remote, simulation-based workplaces.

MANA and LAND were Meta’s way of capitalising on the “Metaverse Wave”. MANA is an Ethereum-based cryptocurrency that is currently trading at $0.7. LAND is real estate that people could buy in Meta’s virtual reality environment. LAND works off of the same principles as an NFT, where you own a digital asset on the blockchain.

As of 30th September 2022, 18:48, the cheapest piece of LAND sold on the Decentraland marketplace is worth ~$2,300 dollars. LAND is property to resell or host their content on (a high-tech advertising space).

People can also buy special usernames, articles of clothing, appearance features and other cosmetics to customize their avatars. All of these transactions are done using MANA.

Looking at the current state of Meta, however, you would not think that the company has the potential to deliver on any of its promises.

Another nail in Meta’s coffin is the ad revenue fall experienced by multiple online platforms. Causing the likes of Alphabet’s Google, Twitter and Snap Inc. to reduce their workforce significantly.

Today, Metaverse seems to have taken the most backwards of backseats in the vehicle of priorities as Meta focuses its resources on competing against TikTok and other short content platforms.

All Aboard?

While we have tried to discuss the financial and business implications of this next “version” of human evolution, many ethical questions still remain. Will access to this next step be limited to only the rich, or will the poor be allowed on this technological Noah’s ark? If the poor are let on, will they receive a concession? If the poor may receive a concession, why wouldn’t the rich?

Another set of questions that stands out is about occupancy. Would the entire populace of the Earth be let on? If not, what would be the ideal way to pick and choose the people most worthy of being selected? Should the smartest be given priority and the rest forsaken?

I guess all of these questions boil down to just one quintessential question…

What is the value of human life, and if someone came knocking, asking for that price, would you pay it?