In an era of population deflation, the future belongs to "super individuals + AI + Web3".

Author: Amelia I Biteye Content Team

Over the past century, almost all economic growth models have assumed one premise: the next generation will have more than the current generation.

A larger population means a more abundant labor force, a larger consumer market, and more predictable long-term returns.

But this premise is failing globally.

In China, Japan, South Korea, Europe, and even the United States, declining birth rates are moving from being merely "statistical data" into a structural reality.

When "people" are no longer the most abundant, cheapest, and most replicable factor of production, the entire technological and institutional narrative will be forced to be rewritten.

The emergence of Web3 and AI is not a random technological wave, but an inevitable response to the era of population deflation.

I. Population Discontinuity: An Underestimated Systemic Risk

When discussing population decline, much of the discussion focuses solely on "labor shortage."

However, if you only understand it as a "labor problem", you will seriously underestimate its destructive power.

Deflation is truly eroding the underlying three-tiered structure.

Labor: From a cyclical problem to an irreversible structural scarcity

China's birth gap (2010–2023)

Visually, what you see is not a "slide," but a clear cliff-like drop.

Taking China as an example:

• There were approximately 17.86 million newborns in 2016.

• There will be approximately 9 million newborns in 2023.

• It will fall below 8 million in 2025.

In just 7 years, it was cut in half.

what does that mean?

People born in 2023 will enter the labor market around 2045: not "a little less", but "half as much".

This is not a cyclical fluctuation, but a collapse of the population structure.

More importantly, this trend has been confirmed by long-term forecasts: according to the United Nations' World Population Prospects 2022 report, China's working-age population (15-64 years old) will decrease by approximately 170 million between 2020 and 2050.

In the past, business systems assumed that "people can always be recruited, it's just a matter of price."

In an era of population deflation, the problem has changed.

Delayed retirement, immigration, and birth subsidies are all slow-moving variables.

However, the business system cannot wait twenty years.

This is precisely where all technological narratives begin to distort.

Attention and creator supply shrink simultaneously: Web2's hidden fatal flaw

The decline in the young population not only leads to a decrease in the labor force, but also to a more hidden and fatal problem: who will produce content and who will consume it?

• The number of content producers has decreased.

• The spread of new culture and new narratives is slowing down.

• Platform traffic growth logic fails

The "user growth → traffic → advertising → commission" model that Web2 relies on is essentially built on population expansion.

When new users stop appearing, the platform begins to engage in internal competition, the rules start to change frequently, and the trust between creators and the platform crumbles.

This is precisely the structural flaw that Web2 faces in an era of population deflation that is most difficult to repair.

The systemic collapse of long-term demand: Long-termism is being forced to be reassessed.

Real estate, education, long-term consumer goods, pension systems...

What these systems have in common is that they all implicitly assume there will be more people in the future.

When this assumption is broken, all "long-term assets" will be repriced.

II. Why is AI a necessity in an era of population deflation?

Human labor force shrinkage vs. AI capital expansion

On one side is a slow but certain decline, and on the other side is an exponential rise. The only "labor force" that can still expand is not people.

If deflation has changed the problem itself, then AI is becoming the only viable solution.

AI is not a tool to improve efficiency, but rather a tool to eliminate the need for human intervention.

We are used to describing AI as an "efficiency tool".

But in the real world, it doesn't solve an efficiency problem, but a structural one: the system no longer needs so many people.

AI customer service, AI content generation, AI research assistant, AI trading system - their significance is not to make people 20% faster, but to remove "people" from the necessary conditions of the system.

In a world of deflation, the real question is no longer: "Can we find someone for this job?", but rather: "Do we still need people to participate in this process?"

AI is not replacing inefficient people, but rewriting the entire society's assumption of dependence on "human resources".

AI is the only workforce capable of exponential growth.

• Population: Linear growth, or even negative growth

• AI: Computing power, models, data → Exponential expansion

This is why, despite the extremely high level of macroeconomic uncertainty, capital is still choosing to heavily invest in AI.

Because in an era of population deflation, only AI possesses the "capability to scale up".

AI enables the "individual" to become a unit of production again.

Production unit compression diagram (team → individual + AI)

From a "10-person team" to "1 person + AI", production units are being rapidly compressed.

AI is giving rise to a new organizational form:

• One-person company

• Super Individual

• Solo Founder

• AI Native Creators

When society cannot mass-produce young people, the system has no choice but to amplify the individual.

III. So what role does Web3 play here?

If AI solves the problem of "who will do the work," then Web3 solves a more fundamental problem:

In an era with fewer people, how do we collaborate, allocate resources, and build trust?

In an era of fewer people, how can we achieve low-cost collaboration?

DAO, Permissionless Collaboration, Project-Based Contributions —

Web3 restructures "organizations" from long-term employment relationships into temporary, flexibly combinable collaborative networks.

As hiring becomes increasingly expensive, trust and payment processes must be automated.

In an era with fewer people, how should value be distributed?

In an era where labor is becoming scarce, if the distribution of value is not transparent, the system will quickly lose participants.

Tokens, on-chain incentives, and instant settlement do not solve "speculation," but rather address a real-world problem:

How can we get scarce labor to stay and continue building?

How to build long-term trust in an era with fewer people?

The younger generation's trust in long-term commitments is crumbling.

• Distrust of pension funds

• I don't trust the platform to change the rules.

• Long-term incentives for distrusting centralized institutions

Smart contracts and on-chain rules are essentially answering the question:

When there aren't enough people or enough trust, can the rules be enforced on their own?

IV. Web3 + AI: A Complete Solution for the Era of Population Deflation

A clearer conclusion is emerging: Web3 is not a competitor to AI, but rather the institutional framework for the AI era.

What does an AI Agent need?

• identity

• wallet

• Independent trading capability

• Programmable rules

These are all native capabilities of Web3.

In the not-too-distant future, we may see:

• AI-native companies

• AI Autonomous DAO

• AI-to-AI economic collaboration

In this system, humans may no longer be the largest group of economic participants.

V. In conclusion: What does this mean for individuals?

For individuals, it is a harsh but true fact: you will no longer be lifted up by the "population growth" dividend.

But it also means a new window of opportunity:

• AI amplifies personal productivity

• Web3 enables individuals to participate directly in the global system.

• A world with fewer people is actually more friendly to individuals with high cognitive and action-oriented abilities.

If you are an investor/creator, here are some action suggestions from Biteye:

For investors:

• Population deflation is a deterministic variable over a period of 20–30 years, not macroeconomic noise.

• All business models that rely on "population expansion" should have their valuations discounted.

• There are only three types of areas that are truly worth long-term attention:

• • AI that can directly replace human labor

  • Tools that can amplify personal productivity

  • Web3 infrastructure that can run in low-trust environments

For creators/individuals:

• Stop assuming that "the platform will give you long-term returns".

• Try to become:

• • Nodes that can be amplified by AI

  • Personal brands that can be migrated across platforms

  • Independent production units that can be directly settled

After all, in an era of population deflation: the system won't take care of you, but it needs you.

This is not an era where people are becoming more and more numerous.

It is an era where individuals must become increasingly powerful; and what you must rely on are AI and Web3.