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

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

This outcome is possible but not necessarily likely. This concept of merging also supposes that we can even figure out how to implant computer chips that interface with our brain in the first place, that we can do it before the invention of advanced AI, that society will accept it, and that computer implants can actually 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.