A 'living human' is a fully functional intelligent human with a body made of biological matter only. Brain-in-a-jar, computer intelligence and emulated consciousness don't count.
Mass production could be done by any means -- be it surrogacy or complete ex vivo embryo growth or something else. The only requirement is that this process is done on a mass basis and not on a personal request.
@j7dk I have only a couple of speculative ideas in my head. May be totally wrong
1) Workforce, if robots will not be suitable (though I think it's unlikely)
2) Consumers -- if robots are doing everything and regular people live on, say, UBI. Without people companies would face decreasing profits maybe? Sounds like a conspiracy theory though
3) Well I just imagine the world without humans (population will decline according to current models) and intuition tells me that when there are few people left, the wealthiest ones could be interested in creating more actual humans. Though this idea is even more crazy than the previous one.
All of this sounds not impossible emotionally, but from rational point of view it appears like garbage ideas. Anyway, one of the goals of this market is to find out whether there are some other reasons or not; or if I underestimate the probability of my own ideas
@RobinGreen good point. What I actually meant by 'living human' is a human made of biological matter