Meanwhile, Musk and other Silicon Valley billionaires are building a world they read about, as boys, in the pages of books they failed to understand. I think of that world as the Artificial State. The dream of life in outer space, of immortal life, and of colonizing other planets all have a place in the dream of the Artificial State. Altman claimed to be a devotee of science fiction. This dire prospect—the complete abandonment of what it is to be human—apparently held appeal for advocates of artificial intelligence.