Article by Filip Bialy: “AI plays a central role in the 2024 US presidential election, as a tool for disinformation and as a key policy issue. But its significance extends beyond these, connecting to an emerging ideology known as TESCREAL, which envisages AI as a catalyst for unprecedented progress, including space colonisation. After this election, TESCREALism may well have more than one representative in the White House, writes Filip Bialy
In June 2024, the essay Situational Awareness by former OpenAI employee Leopold Aschenbrenner sparked intense debate in the AI community. The author predicted that by 2027, AI would surpass human intelligence. Such claims are common among AI researchers. They often assert that only a small elite – mainly those working at companies like OpenAI – possesses inside knowledge of the technology. Many in this group hold a quasi-religious belief in the imminent arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) or artificial superintelligence (ASI)…
These hopes and fears, however, are not only religious-like but also ideological. A decade ago, Silicon Valley leaders were still associated with the so-called Californian ideology, a blend of hippie counterculture and entrepreneurial yuppie values. Today, figures like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman are under the influence of a new ideological cocktail: TESCREAL. Coined in 2023 by Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres, TESCREAL stands for Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism.
While these may sound like obscure terms, they represent ideas developed over decades, with roots in eugenics. Early 20th-century eugenicists such as Francis Galton promoted selective breeding to enhance future generations. Later, with advances in genetic engineering, the focus shifted from eugenics’ racist origins to its potential to eliminate genetic defects. TESCREAL represents a third wave of eugenics. It aims to digitise human consciousness and then propagate digital humans into the universe…(More)”