We’re going to merge with the machines so this will never be a problem, right?

“Merging with machines,” as popularized by Ray Kurzweil, is the idea that AI will be used for human enhancement (for example, through brain-computer interfaces or brain implants).

This outcome is possible but not necessarily likely. This concept of merging supposes that we can figure out how to implant computer chips that interface with our brain, that we can do it before the invention of advanced AI, that society will accept it, and that such implants can produce major intelligence gains in the human brain.

Even if we do successfully “merge with the machines”, enhancing ourselves with brain implants, this does not necessarily protect us from existential risk.