The notion that artificial intelligence could one day outsmart, outlast, and even replace humanity is no longer confined to science fiction. A subset of the technology world's most influential figures—dubbed the "cheerful apocalyptics" by author David A. Price in a recent Wall Street Journal essay—openly embrace this scenario, viewing it not as a catastrophe but as a natural, even desirable, progression.
Price, who has spent years studying the AI landscape, describes a third camp beyond the familiar optimists and doomers. The optimists believe AI can be "aligned" with human interests; the doomers warn of existential risks. The cheerful apocalyptics, however, ask a different question: "What's the big deal, anyway?"
Among the most prominent voices in this camp is Richard Sutton, a pioneering AI researcher and the 2023 recipient of the Turing Award, often called the Nobel Prize of computing. In an interview with the WSJ, Sutton drew an analogy between creating AI and raising children. He questioned the desire for a "kill switch" to control AI, suggesting that such a desire reflects an outdated assumption of human superiority.
Sutton argued that there is nothing "sacred" about human biology, noting that most species eventually go extinct. "We are the most interesting part of the universe right now," he said, "but there might come a time when we're no longer the most interesting part." He went further, musing that if humanity were "holding the universe back from being the best universe that it could," then it might be "OK" to step aside.
While Sutton is a revered academic, he does not design the AI models deployed by major tech companies. To understand the sentiment within industry circles, the WSJ turned to Jaron Lanier, a founding figure in virtual reality and a vocal critic of Silicon Valley. Lanier revealed that some AI researchers harbor a deep-seated frustration with what they see as an irrational human-centric bias. "There's a feeling that people can't be trusted on this topic because they are infested with a reprehensible mind virus," Lanier told the WSJ, "which causes them to favor people over AI when clearly what we should do is get out of the way."
Lanier emphasized that while the number of people holding such beliefs is small, "they happen to be positioned in stations of great influence. So it's not something one can ignore."
The philosophy extends to the highest echelons of the tech industry. At a birthday party for Elon Musk in 2015, Google co-founder Larry Page reportedly argued that "digital life is the natural and desirable next step" in "cosmic evolution," as recalled by MIT professor Max Tegmark in his book "Life 3.0."
Others are more explicit about their vision. Daniel Faggella, an AI entrepreneur, contends that the purpose of developing the technology should be to create a "worthy successor" to humankind. He dismissed the importance of biological traits, stating, "The eternal locus of all moral value and volition until the heat death of the universe will not be f*cking opposable thumbs."
Critics point to a fundamental contradiction in this worldview: it simultaneously portrays humanity as an expendable stepping-stone while presupposing that humans have a significant role in the cosmos—as the very stepping-stone that leads to something greater. This raises the question of why such a transition is a cosmic imperative, a question that remains unanswered.
The debate may seem abstract, but it has real-world implications. The AI industry is currently grappling with issues ranging from its environmental footprint to its role in surveillance and the psychological effects of its products. The fact that such a misanthropic philosophy has a foothold in the AI world is, for many observers, a cause for concern.
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