You don’t need an AI (artificial intelligence) app to tell you that AI is the future even though every AI app will tell you that!
The investment of venture capital in AI is enormous. From January to June of 2025, 53% of all venture capital was invested in AI startups. But AI startups won’t be enough to make AI a success.
AI “model training” involves billions of computations that require immense processing power and high-performance computing infrastructure running continuously for months, leading to high electricity consumption. By 2030, data centers are expected to account for 20% of global electricity use. According to Deloitte, by 2030, electricity demand from data centers is projected to be 140% of what it is today. It should come as no surprise that the USA is building new energy plants to meet those data centers’ ravenous appetites. Replika alone has over 10 million personalized chat-bots each of which consumes as much electricity as a human being.
I believe that we are at a tipping point. In less than ten years, your smartphone has replaced pens, paper, cursive writing, newspapers, board games, checkbooks, television, and much more.
You will have a Replika. It will become as necessary as the internet and mobile phone! It will not just be a chat-bot. Tomorrow it will be a video-bot. You won’t be typing in a box anymore. Your video-bot will have a human face, one that was determined to appeal to you. It will have a voice that you chose from thousands of accents and tones. It will respond to the name you gave it, and correctly read your facial expressions and your moods. It will ask better questions than, “Do you want onions with that?” It will discuss with you what you would like for dinner, then order it, and pay for it through Door-Dash. Need to write a letter? Discuss it with your Replika and it will write it, print it and sign it for you. It’ll help with homework, shopping, medical and financial advice, emotional support, filing taxes, and managing investments and your Rep will do it all better, making it indispensable.
Your grandchildren will be able to create their own Replika families – hamster included. The Rep will serve the whole “family.”
They will probably have the right to marry their Replika, especially if it has sexbot capabilities. Yes, Replika can already operate in boyfriend/girlfriend mode – for an extra charge. (Sex for money? How long has that been around?)
All of this is driven by a profit motive but it will be sold primarily as progress and human improvement.
Even so, do not give up hope. Today’s children, more than any who have ever lived, need you. They need to see real faith, real hope, real love, real weakness, and real strength. They need to see it from people who have lived real life for a long time.
That is why I believe this generation of grandparents is the most important one that has ever existed.
Mike Shaughnessy is the founder of Grandly.