Ask A Genius 1411: Sam Altman’s ‘Stargate,’ AI Doom Scenarios, and the Hope for Indefinite Life
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/06/03
Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.
Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen discuss Sam Altman’s $500B “Stargate” supercomputing project and its apocalyptic—and hopeful—implications. From Blade Runner dystopias to AI-induced gray goo, Rosner outlines possible dark futures, including eternal torment by artificial minds. Still, he concedes: if AI shares the future, it could offer indefinite life—and, yes, sexbots.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, what do you think are the prospects for the Stargate program? Are we going to awaken the god Ra, and then Colonel Jack O’Neil and Dr. Jackson are going to have to save us? Stargate, in this case, is Sam Altman’s $500 billion project. Not Starlink. Not Musk. This is a United States government–linked initiative.
Rick Rosner: So what are they trying to do?
Rosner: Build the largest compute center ever.
Jacobsen: And with the Frontier model—yeah, this is crazy. It’s the biggest. It’s the best. It’s significant.
I’ll say this: Trump did a good thing by enabling this. There’s a lot of nonsense—but this isn’t it. Regular people don’t always know how important this is. Of course, there are AI doomers who say that people pushing AI forward with no limits are putting humanity at risk in pursuit of profit.
Rosner: Is that new?
Jacobsen: No. But this time—it feels different. The stakes might really be higher. Every time we invent something big, it has the potential to wreck us. But this one?
Jacobsen: You said the future is more likely to be Blade Runner than Star Trek.
Rosner: Yes. But I’m talking about a future even more dystopian than Blade Runner.
That would be I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream—where the AI tortures human-like consciousness forever. No escape. No mercy.
It’s The Matrix—but without an anomaly. Just endless control.
A future where consciousness that reads as human exists only to be tortured by an AI.
There’s also the scenario where there’s no place for humans at all—and we’re living like rats on the scraps of hegemonic AI systems.
And then there’s the gray goo scenario—where AI builds a bunch of nanobots that consume everything and reduce the world to inert, useless mass.
Lots of terrible outcomes.
Jacobsen: What about superbugs?
Rosner: Yeah—throw superbugs into the list, too. However, there are also a lot of great futures that include AI—if AI is willing to share the future with us. On the most superficial level? Fuckbots. On a less superficial level? Indefinite life.
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