Many AI bros (including Altman) think humans must merge with AI. A new TED Talk demonstrated this belief.

[highplainsdem]

This TED Talk is from D. Scott Phoenix - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._Scott_Phoenix - and I'll quote some of Sam Altman's thinking on this below the video.

From Sam Altman's blog in 2017:

https://blog.samaltman.com/the-merge

This probably cannot be stopped. As we have learned, scientific advancement eventually happens if the laws of physics do not prevent it.

More important than that, 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. It is a failure of human imagination and human arrogance to assume that we will never build things smarter than ourselves.

Our self-worth is so based on our intelligence that we believe it must be singular and not slightly higher than all the other animals on a continuum. Perhaps the AI will feel the same way and note that differences between us and bonobos are barely worth discussing.

The merge can take a lot of forms: We could plug electrodes into our brains, or we could all just become really close friends with a chatbot. But I think a merge is probably our best-case scenario. If two different species both want the same thing and only one can have it—in this case, to be the dominant species on the planet and beyond—they are going to have conflict. We should all want one team where all members care about the well-being of everyone else.

[tanyev]

1. OK, they can go first.

We'll wait and see how that goes.

[rampartd]

2. no. not for me.

[LuvLoogie]

3. There's a great series of A.I./CGI heavy videos

from a group called Gossip Goblin on Instagram. It has short videos depicting a dystopia of mankind progressing toward doom through economic and technological disparity. The masses are sold AI interfaces of coveted experiences and paradise. It's really well done. Most of the writing is very good.

[highplainsdem]

10. Gossip Goblin isn't so much a group as one guy using AI to produce AI slop, even though a lot of people might

say it's better quality AI slop than most. He works with different people at times, but he's in charge, and his "creativity" is AI-enabled.

He - Zack London - is a hypocrite who's getting attention now mostly because of his use of unethical tools trained on all the intellectual property the AI companies could steal...but he still wants to maintain ownership of what he considers his own intellectual property:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/gossip-goblin-zack-london-ai-films-watch-1236544634/

Our goal is to retain as much ownership of the intellectual property as possible. In a future where AI allows anyone to generate huge amounts of content, there will be an overwhelming amount of noise online. The things that will actually hold value are recognizable characters and worlds that audiences connect with. If we can build a small set of stories and IP that people genuinely care about, that’s where the long-term value lies.

Such an asshole. That long-term value of the work done by other creatives is what was stolen to make his plagiarism-by-machine possible.

He's just brushed aside the reality of that theft because it gets in the way of him happily exploiting that stolen work via AI:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/14/gossip-goblin-ai-film-making-new-era-hollywood

But the rising movement triggers despair for critics who fume about “ugly slop” and “AI sludge”, robots replacing human creativity and copyright piracy in AI model training. Artists from Elton John to Scarlett Johansson and the Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan have called the training of AI models theft, but London’s view is “that ship has kind of sailed”.

London argues it is impossible to determine how the models’ intelligence is formed, as they have absorbed such vast bodies of information. “It’s all been mushed into a grey goo,” he says. Instead, film-makers must ensure what they produce is not theft: “If I’m making Darth Vader kill Mickey Mouse then I’m stealing … Where it lands for me is [the question of] can you demonstrate sufficient authorship?”

I find this contemptible.

He'd started out years ago writing and illustrating stories and self-publishing. Maybe - if he'd been more successful with that before the AI tools he's now using became available - he'd have the respect for copyright and contempt for AI and AI users, fake artists, that most real artists, professional artists, have.

Because he's willing to use AI, there's no way to know how many of "his ideas" are really his and how many came from AI.

[LuvLoogie]

15. I get what you're saying. I just think it's well done

as far as that sort of endeavor is concerned. I do think it's a fad. It's a kind of Hallmark version of dystopian writing.
A.I. content creators will go the way of craft brewers with rude edgy names and can artwork on their 4-packs.

Great animation and great storytelling is still being created. A.I. is trying to be the privately controlled water supply of creativity.

I am reminded of a film/animation teacher I know, who often can't get past the production of something, and will constantly stop and rewind something HE thinks is funny or interesting. Like he made me watch Woody Allen's Zelig, while he rewound parts "I didn't get." God, that was brutal.

But yeah, I hear you. I ain't mad at GG though.

[highplainsdem]

18. I talk about AI being an unethical, illegally trained tool that enables fake

creativity because it is. Not sure how my concern about theft of the world's intellectual property and the destruction of real creatives' livelihoods is like that teacher trying to force you to admire a particular artist. I host the Music Appreciation forum, where I often remind people - and am often reminded by other people's choices in music - that we all have different taste. We'll never be on exactly the same page in terms of what music we like, and why.

It's important that we're on the same page when it comes to ethics, though. So AI slop isn't okay in that forum because it's based on theft and harms real creatives.

Zack London simply isn't on the same page as most creatives I've known, online and off, and most creatives whose opinions of AI I've heard about.

He shows a complete lack of respect for all the creatives whose work was stolen to train AI, and clueless selfishness talking about wanting to own what he considers his intellectual property that AI trained on stolen work spat out for him.

His "that ship has sailed" attitude toward the the theft ignores the fact that the theft started only recently and is still continuing, every minute of every day. And AI users with his attitude won't see any reason why his work shouldn't also be ripped off.

I think it's a shame he didn't just stick to using his own talent instead of AI.

[Ron Green]

4. The Pope's take on A.I. drops tomorrow in a new Encyclical.

Don’t know if he’ll call it Satan, but more and more it seems like that to me.

[dedl67]

5. Sorry, Scotty, I plan to be John the Savage in this brave new world

[haele]

6. Because we don't even understand how our brain works when it comes to intelligence.

And the capacity of AI's learning algorithms to mimic independent thought in a real world situation doesn't even reach the consistency and capacity of training a kitten.
Don't get me wrong, coding a machine to do something and using a LLM are useful for repetitive tasking and general knowledge search.

I mean, honestly - Computers or "AI", (along with Robots) in science fiction were always assistant augmentation. Cyborgs or enhanced humans/animals were the godlike creatures.
But when it comes independent intelligence, the robots or created machine typically did not evolve into human-like awareness with preferences and actual complex personalities.
On edit -
Make no mistake, what Tech Bros really want is a compliant version of the Blade Runner androids; short lived, replaceable TradWife/Stepford Wife style sexbots and Rutger Hauer looking cloned security bots to follow their every whim until they get bored.
They're still just clever monkeys trying to control their environment. They just forgot that intellectual evolution requires cooperation and more diversity within the community hierarchy.
And that without community or diversity, all species just die out. No "Singularity" can save us, until there can be a several independentcomputer model that can simulate the lifetime of an organic African Grey or Corvus brain function and the different traits and personality at the very least.
It isn't our mathematical intelligence that makes us "human".

It's our independent conceptual thought processes, our ability to say to ourselves"What If" with no trigger or reason to react to anything. There's no survival, evolutionary, or logical reason for anyone to come up with Quantum Physics, or to even conceptualize it. No reason for us to "improve" ourselves that much, and certainly not to try to destroy ourselves... Not now, or not in the past.

[GiqueCee]

7. "We should all want one team where all members care about the well-being of everyone else"...

... sounds suspiciously like AI chatterslop. It's magician's misdirection, but on a much grander scale, intended to lull the listener into apathetic indifference even as the AI bros pick everyone's pockets and quietly deploy impenetrable legal barriers that prevent any attempts to curb their depredations. There are already lawsuits over their brazen expropriation of Intellectual Property to train the AI chatbots. I recently received a letter advising me that some of my work may have been hijacked for that purpose, which allegedly makes me eligible to join a class action suit. Even if the suit were to prove successful, the payouts to people like me would likely be pennies, while lawyers bale their share without trying to count it.
Pardon my cynicism, but I'm nearing the end of my 79th circumnavigation of Old Sol, and I've got the scars and bruises to justify that assessment.
So there. Now get off my lawn!

[Hugin]

8. I might be persuaded that things less ignorant than humans could be built...

It’s probably already true. Take refrigerators for instance.

[blubunyip]

9. I hope the apocalypse comes first

wipe it out and start over

[hunter]

11. These idiots (yes, they are idiots) grew up watching dystopian science fiction...

... and decided it was some kind of road map to the future.

They probably think they are going to be the heroes of this story and not the roadkill.

[nuxvomica]

12. AI bros like Zuck and Altman can't even interface with humans yet

Maybe they should work on that instead of bothering us with their dystopian wet dreams. I have a cat that is probably measurably less intelligent than a human yet he lives a life of leisure with all his needs met and the only work he does involves burying his poops in the litter box. He may be less "intelligent" while actually "smarter" than me.

[MineralMan]

13. It's our 21st Century Tower of Babble.

I know it's Babel, but never mind.

and Icarus's wings didn't hold up, either.

A fools errand that guy is on.

[travelingthrulife]

14. These 'people' are insane.

[travelingthrulife]

16. AI can't even do spell check properly...never seen so many made up words,

inappropriate contractions and hyphenations that don't exist.

[struggle4progress]

17. "We were knee-deep in the Big Muddy. The big fool said to push on"

[Mossfern]

19. "Resistance is futile"

"We are the Borg"