Björn Jeffery

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on April 20th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Must humanity merge with AI to survive? At the TED conference, anxiety about the development is growing — and exposing a rift in the elite’s view of what lies ahead.

It smells of pine inside the Vancouver Convention Center. The TED conference is taking place in a kind of wooden amphitheatre, where a select group is already sitting at the very front — donors with their own entrance. Over 1,500 people have travelled to western Canada to listen to speakers on everything from lead poisoning to covid vaccines and relationships.

One question keeps recurring, however. And it creates a clear unease and friction among the well-heeled audience.

Should we embrace AI development fully? Or should we rather avoid it at all costs?

TED broke through on a broad front in the mid-2010s. “TED Talks” — short, directed presentations from the main stage — became their own category of video on the internet. A cultural reference point one could cite at dinner parties.

The audience is a mixture of philanthropists, researchers, activists, and tech workers. A simpler way to group them is as an elite. Influential people who, with both cultural and economic capital, shape opinion and societal development.

This elite’s view of the AI question is therefore particularly interesting. Whether educational initiatives for children in developing countries are a good thing — another recurring theme — is fairly uncontroversial. The question of self-driving cars is considerably harder, given both road safety and the jobs that will inevitably disappear as they roll out into the world.

This theme runs like a thread through the conference. TED host Chris Anderson returns to it many times during the week. “The future is a dance between humans and AI,” he says. So how will this dance unfold?

Tech entrepreneur D Scott Phoenix gives us one vision. He has previously sold an AI company to Google and has a definitive view of how things should develop. “We will merge with AI, because the alternative of being replaced is worse,” he says.

Phoenix refers to the fact that merging is the first thing we did as humanity — through our cells — and that this is a natural and inevitable continuation of that path. Either we create descendants or we become fossils. That is the choice we face.

He tells of a dinner he attended in Silicon Valley recently with other AI leaders. The participants were “names you would recognise,” he says, without going into exactly who. When asked whether the AI leaders believed there was more than a 10 percent chance that AI would kill most people on earth, many raised their hands.

That is the scenario Phoenix is weighing up against. It is therefore better to merge and bring AI development as close to humanity as possible. Because the alternative could mean the end of humanity as we know it.

The audience gasps as he speaks.

Others have a more restrained vision. Steve Huffman, CEO of the online forum Reddit, presents his company’s product as a kind of counter-movement to the automated.

“Reddit is like a city,” he explains — a place where people build relationships with each other on their own terms.

It sounds good. Like a relief for many, after Phoenix’s talk. But when Huffman receives a standing ovation, one gets the feeling that most people in the room have not spent much time on Reddit. It is certainly human, but it does not take many clicks before the rose-tinted picture takes on a different form.

Austrian founder Peter Steinberger of Open Claw is the most relaxed of all. His creation enables people to create their own AI agents that work autonomously. But it came about somewhat by accident. After testing his new AI robot in an internet forum with others, he shut down his computer and went to bed. When he woke up, the robot had started the computer itself and continued talking.

In the end, Steinberger had to pull the plug out of the wall to be sure it would stop. He laughs at the whole thing and says he does not recommend letting one’s AI robots run completely out of control.

TED host Chris Anderson steps onto the stage after the talk looking worried. He says Steinberger frightens him. How can he take this so lightly?

Steinberger smiles, wearing a blue blazer with a toy lobster — Open Claw’s mascot — tucked into the breast pocket.

“The lobster has been released,” he says, “and it won’t go back to the aquarium again.”

There is something fateful about both the presentations and the conversations around them. Have we already passed the point where AI will take over completely, or is there still time to change course?

British neuroscientist Anil Seth offers a different perspective. We may be standing at a crossroads with technology — but merging is not on the table, according to him. Overestimating AI is underestimating yourself as a human, he believes.

Seth distinguishes between intelligence and consciousness. Humans are unique in displaying high levels of both simultaneously, which makes it difficult for us to assess technological development correctly.

“We see consciousness where there is none,” says Seth, and urges resistance to anthropomorphising technology. Doing so — thinking of machines as something with consciousness — makes us psychologically vulnerable. And through that, we risk being manipulated by them.

The questions about what humanity’s role will be in an AI world are many and difficult. TED gives no clear answer and appears to have deliberately chosen speakers with very different perspectives, letting the audience make up their own minds. The mood is serious and thoughtful.

Which is why comedian George Civeris provides the most cathartic moment of the week. He says TED is “the only place that brings together people all trying to solve the world’s problems.”

We in the audience look at each other and feel satisfied. Despite these difficult questions, we are doing our best. We have flown halfway around the world to try to work out what the future might look like — and someone has seen us.

But then comes Civeris’s punchline: “and then mixes them with all those who created the problems in the first place.”

The laughter that follows is long-awaited. And a little painful.