Some AI entrepreneurs are flirting with the extinction of humankind as we know it.
Sam Altman has invested in technology that aims to “upload consciousness” to a machine. Elon Musk is pursuing human “symbiosis” with artificial intelligence. Peter Thiel has hesitated when asked if he prefers the human race to endure.
There’s a sentiment that underlies all this creepiness: transhumanism, or the belief that man and machine must merge into one to realize our full potential.
Big Tech execs have appointed themselves as techno-gods who will usher humanity into a cyborg future, even if it means turning their backs on standard mankind itself.
“People always talk about AI, just in terms of money and jobs,” MIT physicist Max Tegmark told The Post. “I think most people don’t realize how much of it has to do with the transhumanist ideology of some people in [Silicon] Valley.”
No moment illustrated transhumanist ideology better than when Palantir founder Thiel was asked a simple question by Ross Douthat in a June podcast: “You would prefer the human race to endure, right?”
Douthat had to ask Thiel three times, before he finally answered with an explanation of his “transhumanist” worldview: “Transhumanism is this… radical transformation where your human, natural body gets transformed into an immortal body.”
What should be a no-brainer became a trick question, because Thiel envisions a future full of immortal, digitized cyborgs rather than our current lowly human form.
It’s part of a creepy effort in Silicon Valley to usher in the “singularity,” the point when man and machine become inextricable.
“It’s not that we get upgraded, but there’s a new species in town,” Tegmark quipped.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted this merger of man and machine on his blog in 2017: “Unless we destroy ourselves first, superhuman AI is going to happen, genetic enhancement is going to happen, and brain-machine interfaces are going to happen.”
Achieving transhumanism requires these unelected tech overlords to reinvent what it means to be human. Some are already pouring millions into hacking the body like a machine in pursuit of immortality.
Thiel and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have both backed Unity Biotechnology, a company that aims to “find a cure” for aging, and Thiel and Altman have invested in Minicircle, which has a similar mission.
Meanwhile, Venmo entrepreneur Bryan Johnson is spending $2 million annually in his own quest to slow his aging.
Tech execs are even reinventing the human brain. In January, OpenAI announced its investment in Merge Labs, a research lab with “the mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence.”
Altman said in a blog post that brain-computer interfaces “are an important new frontier.”
Elon Musk’s Neuralink has been pursuing technology that lets the brain control computers. Musk said he wants to give people “superpowers” as well as “symbiosis” with AI, so that they aren’t “left behind” as machine intelligence progresses.
Tech reporter Taylor Lorenz posited that transhumanism is why tech companies seem to be recklessly innovating, regardless of the cost.
“AI companies take risks and treat AI safety as an afterthought,” she said in a January episode of her podcast, Power User. “The founders and executives are already acting like the survival and wellbeing of ordinary human beings is significantly less important.”
Case in point: Altman invested in Nectome, a startup promising to digitize the brain. The only problem: the digital immortality procedure has a 100% fatality rate. “I assume my brain will be uploaded to the cloud,” Altman told MIT Technology Review when he invested in 2018.
Altman venerates machines so much that he can denigrate humanity by contrast. In February, he defended AI’s energy cost by criticizing human beings themselves as energy inefficient: “It takes like 20 years of life, and all the food you eat before that time, before you get smart.”
These ghoulish comments and investments come together to promote the transhumanist vision. Biohacking companies blur the line between organic and synthetic life. Brain-computer interfaces promise to make the brain and AI one and the same.
It all amounts to a reinvention of mankind, an almost religious vision. Even Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg admitted that people in the industry discuss “building this one true AI” like they “think they’re creating God or something.”
The technohumanists want to colonize our brains and reinvent our bodies to deliver us from our pitiful organic state. They want a techno-reinvention of our human genesis. The last hurdle they have to cross, though, is the reluctance of the general public.
“It’s deeply unpopular with overall Americans… For the vast majority of people I talk to, they find it absolutely horrifying,” Tegmark said. “But there are a lot of people in Silicon Valley who share Sam Altman’s excitement with this scenario.”
Regular people are wiser than tech geniuses in realizing that a transhumanist utopian vision could actually become a dystopia in practice, and very quickly.
Tegmark posed a hypothetical to illustrate, comparing humanity merging with AI being like a snail latching onto a human.
It is like saying to a snail, “Don’t worry. There’s this new species coming along, but you can just merge with it…. and it’s going to be heavenly bliss for you.
“Even if [we] merge with these much smarter machines, like a snail attaching to the leg of a human or something, that doesn’t mean that we’re in charge.”
