# Designing Our Descendants Requires Choosing Between Bootloader and Merge by Sam Altman > “Although the merge has already begun, it’s going to get a lot weirder. We will be the first species ever to design our own descendants. My guess is that we can either be the biological bootloader for digital intelligence and then fade into an evolutionary tree branch, or we can figure out what a successful merge looks like.” > **— Sam Altman**, *“The Merge,” December 7, 2017* ## Sources and Context - **Primary source:** [Sam Altman, “The Merge”](https://blog.samaltman.com/the-merge) — verifies the wording, attribution and immediate source setting. - **Interpretive context:** Altman presents merger as the preferred continuity model when biological and digital intelligence would otherwise become separate competitors. Restoring the full paragraph preserves the choice that gives “design our own descendants” its meaning: humanity may become a biological bootloader, or it may remain continuous with its technological descendants through a successful merge. - **Editorial treatment:** The quotation is the complete source paragraph and contains no inserted language or silent paraphrase. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]] - **Article:** [[articles/We Cannot Un-Strike the Match|We Cannot Un-Strike the Match]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Sam Altman|Sam Altman]] - [[wiki/Artificial Descendants|Artificial Descendants]] - [[wiki/Human-Machine Merger|Human-Machine Merger]] - [[wiki/Biological Bootloader|Biological Bootloader]] - [[wiki/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Although the merge has already begun, it’s going to get a lot weirder. We will be the first species ever to design our own descendants. My guess is that we can either be the biological bootloader for digital intelligence and then fade into an evolutionary tree branch, or we can figure out what a successful merge looks like.” — Sam Altman, “The Merge,” December 7, 2017 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-sam-altman-design-descendants-bootloader-merge ```