Our tech overlords are planning for conscious AI to conquer the cosmos. What could go wrong?

June 4, 2026

translucent digital image of a person

(The Guardian) – A new belief set is uniting some of the wealthiest men in the world around a ‘transhuman’ future – actual humanity be damned

It would be a mistake to understand these weird worldviews as an ultimately harmless take by techies who grew up on a diet of dystopian science fiction. The notion that we are approaching the end of the homo sapiens, as defined since Darwin’s day, is coalescing into a durable body of belief among the elites at the helm of our technological future.

Their dreams are not all perfectly aligned. But like the folk stories and superstitions that have for ever revolved around more established religious traditions, the collection of far-fetched scenarios valley oligarchs are writing into our future exhibits the hallmarks of a religion in the making, a body of belief to confer a sense of cosmic transcendence and inevitability to their hi-tech project. (Read More)