I'm guessing there's a fancy name for this phenomenon that I'm not aware of, but a lot of these kinds of advocacy-news pieces fall victim to it: The assumption that a problem that will occur in X number of years, where X is anything greater than, say, 20 will be met only with the exact technology available to us, today.
If tomorrow, most of the non-elderly population died off leaving only the less-capable-of-working-and-therefore-feeding-the-world-elderly to fend for themselves, we'd have a crisis on our hands. This will happen gradually, over time. Over time, nearly every thing we produce -- food included -- is done more efficiently when the market requires it.
I should temper this a little -- I'm not saying "let's just start pouring sewage into the rivers because robots will come by and clean it up some day"[0], ignore climate change (or deny it or anything else). I am suggesting those who believe this is a problem that requires awareness (and not dismissal) might be better served by being less sensational. And it would be intelligent of us to remember that when we try to make predictions about the future that the future happens all around the thing you're predicting, too ... and might even make it irrelevant.
[0] If anything it's over-reacting pieces like this that cause people to think that way ... especially when they end up being the opposite of previous hauntingly similar sounding over-reactions (see The Population Bomb)
If tomorrow, most of the non-elderly population died off leaving only the less-capable-of-working-and-therefore-feeding-the-world-elderly to fend for themselves, we'd have a crisis on our hands. This will happen gradually, over time. Over time, nearly every thing we produce -- food included -- is done more efficiently when the market requires it.
I should temper this a little -- I'm not saying "let's just start pouring sewage into the rivers because robots will come by and clean it up some day"[0], ignore climate change (or deny it or anything else). I am suggesting those who believe this is a problem that requires awareness (and not dismissal) might be better served by being less sensational. And it would be intelligent of us to remember that when we try to make predictions about the future that the future happens all around the thing you're predicting, too ... and might even make it irrelevant.
[0] If anything it's over-reacting pieces like this that cause people to think that way ... especially when they end up being the opposite of previous hauntingly similar sounding over-reactions (see The Population Bomb)