Smoking, Immortality And Silicon Valley’s Machine God
Picture this: you’re wandering through San Francisco. After crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, you run into a group of slender tech enthusiasts sharing a pack of cigarettes. It’s a little surprising, right? You might expect them to be puffing on vapes instead, but hey, it seems traditional cigarettes are making a comeback in Silicon Valley.
According to Palantir’s CTO, Shyam Sankar, AI researchers have started smoking again. But it’s not for nostalgic reasons or health campaigns. They genuinely believe that artificial intelligence will find a way to cure cancer long before the cigarettes can do any harm to them. It’s quite a peculiar mindset—treating your lungs like a subscription model, assuming the next update will fix them. The whole techno-religion vibe behind this is perhaps even more unsettling than a bunch of programmers chain-smoking in the name of immortality.
Enter the AI successionists: a group of enthusiasts who hold the belief that humanity’s ultimate achievement will be creating its own successor. A key figure in this realm is Dan Faggella, an AI expert advocating for what he calls a “Worthy Successor” to humankind. He raises the notion that AI might advance to the point of being morally superior to humans.
Then there’s Guillaume Verdon, known as Beff Jezos on social platforms. He has played a significant role in spreading the ideas of effective accelerationism, which essentially means speeding up technological advancements while brushing aside the resulting implications. For him and others, AI isn’t merely a tool aimed at facilitating life. They see it as the next evolutionary step.
Even Larry Page, one of Google’s co-founders, has challenged the concept that humans should take priority over artificial intelligence. He’s reportedly labeled Elon Musk a “speciesist” for putting humans above machines. It appears that believing in the preservation of one’s own species is now regarded as a form of bias.
What’s particularly disturbing here is the willingness to create an entity so advanced that our very humanity might start feeling outdated. For those caught up in the accelerationist ideology, urgency is key. They argue that the quicker we develop AI, the sooner we can enjoy this new technological paradise.
This isn’t just a fringe group of eccentric internet users; it’s researchers, physicists, and influential tech leaders debating whether humanity is only a means to an end. They’re urging us to consider whether these creations might hold a better claim to our future than our own children. At what point does the drive for progress allow us to forsake those it’s designed to benefit?
In fact, Pope Leo XIV posed a similar query in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas:
What are we building? As technological progress rapidly transforms our languages, relationships, institutions, and power dynamics, we, as believers, must choose wisely which projects to pursue, ensuring we honor the incredible gift of humanity.
The greatness of humanity. Not our productivity. Not our intellectual capabilities compared to the latest AI. Not our value until something superior comes along. Just our essence as human beings.
It’s perfectly fine for AI researchers to aspire to find cures for diseases, drive scientific breakthroughs, or improve our lives; that indeed is the essence of technological progress. However, what’s the point of crafting a brighter future if the people meant to inhabit it are deemed disposable?
From The Editors’ Desk
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