> trying to preserve the human species as it is would be silly

There are a few related concepts being conflated here.

The quote above is a Transhumanist position; they think that humans need to evolve. I don’t think most transhumanists are AI successionists, though one path is “merge with AI” whatever you think that means. Genetic engineering being the other obvious path. You could argue in some sense that “post-humans” succeed humans, but I think most would argue for a gradual transition where it feels more continuous and values are transmitted/preserved somewhat.

e/acc just says “accelerate AI”. Many VCs seem to think AI will remain a tool, they don’t want to be dethroned. Some e/acc are of course successionist, this is Musk and Beff with their talk about “all that matters is the light of intelligence is spread through the universe”.

Conflating all this is the fact that true successionism is way outside the Overton window and so people likely won’t be honest about their wishes. Larry Page famously espoused the view that it was “speciesist” for Musk to not want machines to replace humans. Most people find this position repugnant of course.