They're adherents of the Singularity, a sort of nerd rapture that will occur when machines become smarter than people and begin advancing technological change on their own, eventually outpacing and - in a worst-case scenario - enslaving people before getting bored and grinding us up into fleshy pulp. This, as it happens, resembles the prospect that had the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, all worked up.

Well that's a strawman if I ever saw one. This is past the point where embellishment becomes deception.