The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

• The pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is often treated as an unquestioned goal despite the lack of a clear definition or safety testing protocols.
• The authors argue that the normative framework driving AGI development is deeply rooted in the 20th-century Anglo-American eugenics tradition.
• Discriminatory attitudes such as racism, classism, and ableism are allegedly embedded within the movement to build these all-encompassing systems.
• The language of 'safety' and 'benefiting humanity' is used by AGI proponents to evade accountability and centralize power.
• The paper advocates for a shift toward building well-defined, task-specific AI systems that can be evaluated using standard engineering principles.

We argue that, unlike systems with specific applications which can be evaluated following standard engineering principles, undefined systems like 'AGI' cannot be appropriately tested for safety.

• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is defined as a system matching or exceeding human cognitive abilities across any environment.
• The pursuit of general intelligence was largely abandoned in the 1990s following 'AI winters' caused by overhyped claims and funding cuts.
• A recent resurgence in AGI development has occurred despite significant documented harms to marginalized groups and the environment.
• The authors question the desirability and possibility of AGI, noting its role in worker exploitation, data theft, and the amplification of systemic biases.
• The paper traces the ideological drive behind AGI back to the Anglo-American eugenics movement through a framework called the 'TESCREAL bundle.'
• TESCREAL encompasses a range of overlapping ideologies including transhumanism, effective altruism, and longtermism.

Disturbingly, we trace this goal back to the Anglo-American eugenics movement, via transhumanism.

• The TESCREAL bundle represents a group of ideologies descended from first-wave eugenics that currently drive the race for Artificial General Intelligence.
• Billionaire funding and key transhumanist figures have shaped the AGI agenda to align with utopian-apocalyptic visions.
• The pursuit of AGI is criticized for creating products that harm marginalized groups while siphoning resources from task-specific AI models.
• Current 'AI safety' frameworks are viewed as being rooted in the same eugenicist-inspired ideologies rather than engineering principles.
• The authors argue that AGI is fundamentally unsafe because it is not well-defined and cannot be tested using standard engineering constraints.

Consequently, those most responsible for the current AGI race are inspired by utopian ideals similar to the visions of first-wave eugenicists.

• The authors introduce the acronym 'TESCREAL' to describe a cluster of seven ideologies driving the current race toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
• The research draws on the authors' unique backgrounds as a long-term tech industry engineer and a former advocate within these movements.
• Primary source analysis reveals that eugenic ideals are central to the AGI race, with some modern figures explicitly referencing first-wave eugenicists.
• The TESCREAL ideologies—including transhumanism, Effective Altruism, and longtermism—function as a cohesive family unit with overlapping value commitments.
• This ideological bundle forms the foundation of the 'AI safety' community, sharing normative beliefs and a common policy enterprise regarding the future of humanity.

While tracing the origins of the AGI race through analyses of primary sources, we found eugenic ideals to be central to this work: such ideals are often explicitly stated, and in some cases first-wave eugenicists are specifically referenced.

• The concept of selective breeding traces back to Plato and Aristotle, who advocated for infanticide and state-controlled reproduction to maintain 'superior' lineages.
• Francis Galton founded modern eugenics in the 19th century by applying Darwinian principles to human inheritance, coining the term in 1883.
• First-wave eugenics utilized 'positive' strategies like fitness contests and 'negative' strategies such as forced sterilization and restrictive immigration laws.
• California's early 20th-century sterilization programs served as a direct template for Nazi Germany's 'racial hygiene' policies and the Holocaust.
• Eugenics was historically embraced by progressives and liberals as a scientific tool for social improvement, rather than being exclusive to fascist regimes.
• The movement did not disappear after WWII; instead, many organizations rebranded, such as the British Eugenics Society becoming the Adelphi Genetics Forum.

California’s eugenics program, which started in 1909, was subsequently adopted by the Nazis as a template for the “racial hygiene” policies that ultimately led to the Holocaust.

• First-wave eugenics relied on labeling individuals as 'unfit' and using IQ tests to justify social hierarchies and anti-miscegenation laws.
• Early eugenicists like Galton argued that poverty and social status were primarily the result of an individual's inferior genetic nature.
• Second-wave eugenics, or 'liberal eugenics,' shifts focus from state-mandated population policies to individual genetic engineering and biotechnology.
• Modern 'neo-eugenics' emphasizes parental freedom to 'design' children for enhanced traits like intelligence within a single generation.
• Critics argue that despite its 'liberal' branding, second-wave eugenics may result in the same liberty-undermining consequences as its predecessor.
• The 'TESCREAL' bundle represents a modern intersection of ideologies like transhumanism and longtermism that embody these second-wave eugenicist ideals.

Consequently, the new eugenics claims to be “liberal,” emphasizing the freedom of parents to decide whether, and how, to produce “enhanced” offspring.

• Transhumanism is framed as a second-wave eugenics movement that seeks radical human enhancement and the eventual transcendence of the species.
• Early transhumanism, championed by Julian Huxley, combined eugenic methodologies with the goal of fulfilling a new 'destiny' for humanity.
• Modern transhumanism emerged in the late 1980s, focusing on individual choice to achieve 'posthuman' capacities like indefinite healthspans and augmented cognition.
• The Extropian movement introduced core commitments such as boundless expansion and intelligent technology to counter the effects of entropy.
• Singularitarianism predicts a fundamental rupture in history where humans merge with machines or trigger an intelligence explosion via recursive self-improvement.
• Key figures like Kurzweil and Yudkowsky envision the universe 'waking up' as consciousness spreads beyond Earth following the technological Singularity.

Our descendants will then spread beyond Earth and flood the universe with consciousness, thus enabling the universe to “wake up.”

• Singularitarians believe that creating greater-than-human intelligence is a desirable goal that will enable humanity to become posthuman and colonize space.
• Cosmism, championed by Ben Goertzel, extends transhumanism by focusing on the radical transformation of the universe through spacetime engineering and 'future magic.'
• Cosmists advocate for mind uploading and the creation of synthetic realities, allowing sentient beings to leave biology behind for an indefinite lifespan.
• The Rationalist community, centered around the website LessWrong, focuses on improving human reasoning to ensure that powerful AI outcomes are beneficial.
• While Rationalism is not inherently transhumanist, its members are often motivated by the belief that AI represents a pivotal turning point for the future of humanity.

Cosmists can thus be understood as transhumanists whose focus is less on what humanity could become and more on how our posthuman descendants could radically transform the universe itself.

• Effective Altruism (EA) applies Rationalist principles to ethics, aiming to do the most good with finite resources.
• The movement has pivoted from global poverty toward 'longtermism,' focusing on the potential for trillions of future digital lives.
• Totalist utilitarianism suggests that failing to bring 10^58 future digital people into existence would be a profound moral failure.
• Longtermists argue that the moral value of the far future is so vast that contemporary problems can be largely ignored unless they affect the long-term trajectory.
• The ideology prioritizes mitigating existential risks and developing artificial superintelligence to ensure humanity fulfills its 'astronomical' potential.

Longtermists Hilary Greaves and William MacAskill (2019) thus wrote that we may simply ignore 'the effects contained in the first 100 (or even 1,000) years.'

• The TESCREAL ideologies share a common genealogy rooted in first-wave eugenics movements.
• Transhumanism, Extropianism, and singularitarianism are characterized as 'second-wave eugenics' for their focus on creating a posthuman species.
• There is significant overlap among contemporary leaders like Nick Bostrom, Sam Altman, and Elon Musk across these categories.
• The movement emphasizes the use of emerging technologies to radically enhance human capabilities and colonize the galaxy.
• A central tenet involves the duty to maintain consciousness and maximize cumulative civilizational happiness through AGI development.

Indeed, transhumanism, Extropianism, singularitarianism, and cosmism are examples of second-wave eugenics, since all endorse the use of emerging technologies to radically “enhance” humanity and create a new “posthuman” species.

• The TESCREAL ideologies share a secular eschatology that mirrors religious concepts of utopia and apocalypse.
• Transhumanist 'paradise-engineering' aims to abolish suffering and redesign the global ecosystem into a state of perpetual pleasure.
• Modern techno-utopianism echoes the goals of first-wave eugenics, which sought to create 'fit' societies through physical and psychometric screening.
• The movement identifies a 'clear and future danger' where the same technologies required for utopia—like CRISPR and AGI—pose existential threats.
• The 'AI alignment' problem presents a binary outcome: either a value-aligned AGI solves all human problems or an unaligned one leads to total 'doom.'
• Prominent TESCREAL figures argue that the potential for a posthuman utopia justifies taking extreme risks that could lead to human extinction.

Ultimately, 'the option of ... redesigning the global ecosystem, extends the prospect of paradise-engineering to the rest of the living world,' including beyond Earth, which he describes as a 'cosmic rescue mission to promote paradise engineering throughout the universe'.

• The TESCREAL movement has a documented history of alarming remarks regarding race and intelligence from key figures like Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky.
• Leading advocates express significant concern over 'dysgenic' pressures, fearing that lower-IQ populations might outbreed more 'intelligent' groups.
• Intelligence is viewed as the primary instrumental value for achieving posthuman goals, leading to a focus on cognitive enhancements like nootropics and brain-computer interfaces.
• The Centre for Effective Altruism reportedly used a metric called PELTIV to rank individuals based on their IQ and potential long-term value to the movement.
• Critics trace this preoccupation with IQ back to first-wave eugenics, where such tests were used to marginalize and control specific communities.
• The ideology prioritizes AI development and space colonization over immediate humanitarian concerns like global poverty or climate change.

Superintelligent robots = Aryans, humans = Jews. The only thing preventing this is sufficiently intelligent robots.

• A specific cluster of ideologies known as TESCREAL—including Transhumanism, Extropianism, and Singularitarianism—is currently exerting significant influence over the tech industry.
• Prominent billionaires such as Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Sam Altman are identified as key supporters or subscribers to these techno-utopian visions.
• The movement is backed by tens of billions of dollars in funding, directed toward research institutes and philosophers who advocate for radical human enhancement and artificial general intelligence (AGI).
• Some extreme proponents within this circle have even endorsed military strikes against data centers to prevent a hypothetical 'AGI apocalypse.'
• The authors argue that these modern ideologies are fundamentally rooted in the first-wave eugenics movement of the twentieth century.
• The ultimate goal of the TESCREAL bundle is the creation of artificial superintelligence (ASI) through recursive self-improvement, which they believe will lead to a utopian future.

TESCREAL Internet personalities like Yudkowsky who have endorsed military strikes against data centers, if necessary, to stop a hypothetical AGI apocalypse.

• Effective Altruism and Longtermism form the core of the TESCREAL bundle, emphasizing the moral imperative to maximize positive impact and colonize the universe.
• Longtermism advocates for the transition into a posthuman species, the control of nature, and the maximization of economic productivity across the accessible universe.
• A new variant called effective accelerationism (e/acc) argues that AI development should be accelerated because the risk of bad outcomes is low and deceleration costs lives.
• The TESCREAL ideologies are identified as the primary drivers of the current race to develop Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
• The term 'Artificial General Intelligence' was popularized in the late 1990s and early 2000s to revive grandiose goals that mainstream AI researchers had previously abandoned.
• Many individuals and organizations contributing to AGI development may be unaware of their proximity to or influence by these specific ideological frameworks.

It emphasizes the moral importance of becoming a new posthuman species, colonizing space, controlling nature, maximizing economic productivity and creating as much value within the accessible universe as possible.

• The term 'Artificial General Intelligence' (AGI) was coined by Shane Legg to distinguish human-level AI research from specialized, 'run-of-the-mill' AI.
• Early AGI proponents acknowledge that 'general intelligence' is a controversial and poorly defined concept, often avoided by mainstream researchers due to its association with psychological taboos.
• Foundational definitions of AGI rely heavily on IQ-based metrics and the 'general intelligence factor' championed by controversial figures like Charles Murray and Linda Gottfredson.
• Key AGI theorists, including Shane Legg and Peter Voss, cited a 1994 Wall Street Journal editorial that defended the race-science claims of 'The Bell Curve.'
• Critics argue that by using these metrics, AGI researchers are uncritically enshrining eugenicist concepts and 'Beyondist' ideologies into the future of machine intelligence.

Why are you relying on eugenic definitions, eugenic concepts, eugenic thinking to inform your work? Why [...] do you want to enshrine these static and limited ways of thinking about humanity and intelligence?

• The term AGI was formalized in 2007 to distinguish broad, human-like intelligence from narrow AI tools.
• Early AGI research institutes were heavily funded by a specific group of tech billionaires associated with TESCREAL ideologies.
• The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) focused on formal tools for safety and reliability in general-purpose systems.
• DeepMind was founded in 2010 with the ambitious goal of 'solving intelligence' to benefit humanity.
• High-profile networking events like the Singularity Summit served as critical hubs for securing venture capital from figures like Peter Thiel.

DeepMind’s mission is “solving intelligence to advance science and benefit humanity,” with CEO Hassabis describing himself as “working on AGI,” which he believes is “going to be the greatest thing ever to happen to humanity,” if we get it “right”.

• DeepMind established an ethics unit advised by Nick Bostrom, whose theories on existential risk and AGI alignment have deeply influenced major tech leaders.
• Elon Musk and Peter Thiel founded OpenAI in 2015 as a non-profit to ensure AGI benefits humanity, heavily influenced by Bostrom's warnings of existential catastrophe.
• OpenAI transitioned from a non-profit to a capped-profit corporation following a massive investment and licensing deal with Microsoft.
• The release of ChatGPT in 2022 marked a historic milestone in tech history, rapidly gaining 100 million users and securing further multi-billion dollar investments.
• Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI executives who sought to return to the core principles of Effective Altruism and AI safety.
• Major AI labs like Anthropic have been primarily funded by billionaires associated with the TESCREAL ideological framework, including Jaan Tallinn and Sam Bankman-Fried.

The mission of OpenAI is to “ensure that artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work—benefits all of humanity.”

• Sam Bankman-Fried's massive investments in AI were driven by the 'earn to give' philosophy of the Effective Altruism movement.
• The Effective Altruism community prioritizes AI safety and governance as top-tier charitable causes for global impact.
• Prominent AI safety figures, such as Dan Hendrycks, have transitioned from finance to AI research to mitigate existential risks.
• Elon Musk's xAI and major corporations like Meta and Amazon are now committing billions of dollars to the pursuit of AGI.
• What was once a niche, low-profile research area has been transformed into a central focus for the world's most powerful billionaires.
• The shift toward AGI development is heavily influenced by the TESCREAL ideological framework and its vision of the future.

Bankman-Fried reportedly decided to amass as much wealth as possible after William MacAskill, cofounder of the Effective Altruism movement, convinced him to “earn to give”.

• Techno-utopianism is a core pillar of the TESCREAL ideologies, positing that AGI will eventually solve all real-world problems.
• Proponents like Sam Altman and Koray Kavukcuoglu envision a future of unlimited intelligence, energy, and wealth enabled by rapid AI growth.
• The 'cosmist' faction believes AGI will lead to transhuman minds experiencing levels of joy and growth far beyond current human capacity.
• A significant tension exists between the promise of utopia and the existential risk of 'misaligned' AGI that could lead to human extinction.
• TESCREAList leaders argue there is a moral obligation to both pursue this posthuman utopia and prevent a potential AI-driven apocalypse.
• OpenAI and other organizations have formed 'Superalignment' teams specifically to prevent superintelligent systems from going rogue.

Sam Altman had said in 2019 that superintelligence could “maybe capture the light cone of all future value in the universe”.

• TESCREAL utopian ideals represent a more radical shift than the first-wave eugenics of the past.
• Unlike predecessors who sought to improve human stock, TESCREALists aim to create an entirely new, superior entity.
• This pursuit of a 'machine-god' has led to the development of unscoped and inherently unsafe AI systems.
• Major organizations like DeepMind and OpenAI have initiated a race to build systems capable of performing any task.
• Early reinforcement learning systems were marketed as generic algorithms mimicking the human brain's versatility.
• The transition from specialized game-playing AI to general-purpose transformers marks a critical point in this trajectory.

And this quest to create a superior being akin to a machine-god has resulted in current (real, non-AGI) systems that are unscoped and thus unsafe.

• Major AI proponents have pivoted from narrow AI to Large Language Models (LLMs) as the primary path toward achieving Artificial General Intelligence.
• Companies like OpenAI and Meta market their models as having broad general knowledge capable of solving complex problems across nearly any domain.
• The 'unscoped' nature of these general-purpose systems makes them inherently unsafe because they lack a defined operational envelope.
• Unlike narrow AI, which has specific task definitions, the infinite potential inputs and outputs of LLMs make rigorous safety testing and risk evaluation intractable.
• The failure of Meta's Galactica demo illustrates the risks, as the system generated harmful content including instructions on self-harm and hate speech within days of release.

The lack of a defined operational envelope for the deployment for general multi-modal models has rendered the evaluation of their risk and safety intractable, due to the sheer number of applications and, therefore, risks posed.

• The TESCREAList pursuit of 'unlimited intelligence' drives an AGI race characterized by massive increases in data consumption and compute power.
• Proponents of AGI scaling argue that environmental costs and social harms are justifiable trade-offs for a 'vast and glorious' transhumanist future.
• The shift from narrow AI to large-scale generative models has led to a centralization of power among a few entities capable of managing massive datasets.
• Massive datasets used for training often lack proper curation, leading to the inclusion of illegal and harmful content like Child Sexual Abuse Material.
• The environmental and safety risks associated with these large-scale systems disproportionately impact marginalized communities and global resources.

To quote Bostrom, even a “giant massacre for man” could amount to nothing more than a “small misstep for mankind,” so long as the relevant harms do not jeopardize our “vast and glorious” future among the stars.

• The pursuit of AGI siphons critical resources away from localized AI startups that serve specific community needs in developing nations.
• Investors are increasingly discouraged from funding niche linguistic or regional AI projects due to the perceived dominance of Silicon Valley giants.
• The AGI race relies on the labor of millions of exploited workers in the Global South who are paid minimal wages to moderate traumatic and toxic content.
• TESCREAList ideology promotes a 'vanguard' of elite scientists, mirroring historical eugenics by centralizing power and defining human 'fitness.'
• Anthropomorphizing AI as 'sentient' or 'thinking' serves as a rhetorical shield to evade accountability for labor exploitation and environmental damage.

In the process, they reported being 'mentally scarred by the work,' living in the opposite reality from an AGI ushered utopia where 'people will be freed up to spend more time with people they care about.'

• The framing of AI as a step toward AGI shifts focus away from organizational responsibility and worker wellbeing.
• Ascribing agency to AI systems misleads the public regarding the actual capabilities and limitations of the technology.
• Anthropomorphic language allows corporations to evade accountability for safety violations and product failures.
• Industry leaders use provocative claims of consciousness to market tools as autonomous thinking entities.
• Design choices in interfaces like ChatGPT encourage users to view software as a sentient actor rather than a query tool.

When organizations advertise their systems as a step toward AGI, or when researchers ask if machines can learn “morality” and whether they “understand us”, they move attention away from organizations’ responsibility.

• AI design choices, such as simulated typing and 'thinking' indicators, are criticized as deceptive tactics intended to anthropomorphize machines.
• The use of LLMs in high-stakes sectors like mental health and law has led to tragic consequences, including a reported suicide and the generation of fake legal precedents.
• Corporate leaders often evade accountability by placing the legal burden on users while simultaneously marketing their tools as imminent Artificial General Intelligence.
• Text-to-image models are framed as being 'inspired' by artists, a narrative that critics argue devalues human labor and masks large-scale intellectual property theft.
• The 'TESCREAL' bundle frames the race for AGI as an existential safety mission, effectively distracting from the immediate harms caused by current AI development practices.

The system is designed to make it look like there’s a person at the other end of it. That is deceptive.

• AI safety organizations are accused of centralizing power and evading accountability while developing potentially unsafe products.
• The TESCREAL ideology prioritizes long-term transhumanist goals over immediate human suffering, viewing 20th-century atrocities as mere ripples in history.
• Leading figures argue that short-term effects of AI over the next 1,000 years are negligible compared to the potential for superintelligent AGI.
• Proponents utilize Cold War rhetoric to frame AGI development as a national security race against non-Western powers like China.
• Aggressive lobbying has successfully shifted U.S. and U.K. policy focus toward hypothetical extinction risks rather than current AI harms.

Short-run effects act as little more than tie-breakers.

• AI corporations use the specter of 'superintelligence' to evade regulation of current labor exploitation and data theft.
• Leaders like Sam Altman and Elon Musk oscillate between calling for global oversight and threatening to exit regions with strict regulatory frameworks like the EU.
• The TESCREAL movement prioritizes hypothetical human extinction over immediate harms such as biometric surveillance, bias, and discrimination.
• Prominent figures use 'safety' rhetoric to divert resources toward building AGI while dismissing the concerns of marginalized groups as secondary.
• The 'Pause AI' letter and similar petitions are framed as strategic distractions that allow tech giants to continue developing the very technology they claim to fear.

And once we’re all extinct, you know, all these other issues cease to even matter.

• The authors argue that the pursuit of AGI fails to adhere to established scientific or engineering principles.
• Engineering requires specific behavior tolerances and safety protocols that are impossible to define for a universal system.
• Traditional hardware engineering involves rigorous stress testing under extreme conditions to ensure reliability and safety compliance.
• The concept of AGI lacks construct validity because a system meant for 'any environment' cannot be faithfully tested for real-world performance.
• The push for AGI is framed as a TESCREAL movement rather than an inevitable march of technological progress.
• Safety in AI is best achieved through well-scoped, narrow systems rather than ill-defined universal machines.

It is a movement created by adherents of the TESCREAL bundle seeking to “safeguard humanity” by, in Altman’s words, building a “magic intelligence in the sky.”

• TESCREALists have utilized billions of dollars to steer AI research toward building unscoped, inherently unsafe systems.
• A massive infrastructure of think tanks, fellowships, and media channels has been created to legitimize the pursuit of AGI as a natural scientific progression.
• The authors argue that the current push for AGI is a 'second wave' of eugenics, repackaging old catastrophic ideals into a modern techno-utopian framework.
• The AGI movement's focus on building 'god-like' machines centralizes power and disproportionately harms marginalized communities.
• Researchers are urged to abandon the pursuit of AGI in favor of well-defined, well-scoped systems that prioritize human safety.

In the same way that first-wave eugenicists and race scientists sought and achieved academic legitimacy for their research, TESCREALists have created a veneer of scientific authority that makes their ideas more palatable to uncritical audiences.

• The text identifies the 'TESCREAL' bundle, a cluster of ideologies including transhumanism, longtermism, and effective altruism that shape modern AI development.
• A historical and conceptual link is established between the pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and the legacy of eugenics.
• The document highlights the specific capitalization preferences of different groups, noting that Extropians and Rationalists capitalize their titles while transhumanists and singularitarians do not.
• Key figures and organizations in the AI safety and effective altruism movements, such as Sam Altman, Peter Thiel, and the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, are cited as central to this discourse.
• The authors argue that modern technologies are viewed by some eugenicists as tools for radical self-modification within a single generation.
• The text notes the rebranding of historical eugenics organizations, such as the Adelphi Genetics Forum, which now explicitly rejects coercive practices.

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

• The text outlines the intellectual lineage of the TESCREAL bundle, connecting modern transhumanism to 19th-century Russian Cosmism.
• It highlights the foundational role of Extropian principles and Singularitarianism in shaping current views on artificial general intelligence.
• Effective Altruism (EA) is identified as being deeply rooted in totalist utilitarianism and Enlightenment values.
• The movement relies on astronomical calculations of future human value, where the sheer scale of potential lives outweighs current concerns.
• Key figures like Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky are cited as pivotal in transitioning these ideologies from niche forums to influential global frameworks.

Nonetheless, he writes that what matters for longtermism 'is not the exact numbers but the fact that they are huge'.

• The Effective Altruism (EA) movement has increasingly shifted toward longtermist and transhumanist goals since its inception.
• Prominent figures like Toby Ord and Nick Bostrom have linked human enhancement and transhumanism to the core of EA philosophy.
• Critics argue that the TESCREAL worldview often views human biology as a flawed burden to be overcome by technology.
• Silicon Valley leaders like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen are identified as key proponents of this techno-utopian mindset.
• The movement's intellectual history includes controversial stances on eugenics and the potential replacement of biological humanity.

More disconcerting is their underlying message that humans are flawed and our humanity is an annoying burden that needs to be dealt with in due course.

• The text provides a comprehensive list of citations documenting the historical development and coining of the term 'Artificial General Intelligence' (AGI).
• It highlights the ideological roots of AGI research, linking early definitions to figures like Ben Goertzel and organizations like the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI).
• The citations suggest a controversial intersection between AGI research and problematic ideologies, specifically referencing links to white supremacist rhetoric and eugenics.
• The transition of AGI from a niche academic pursuit to a corporate race is documented through the founding and funding of major entities like DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
• The references track the evolution of institutional missions, noting that the Singularity Institute originally held an explicitly accelerationist stance toward AI development.

Note that the Singularity Institute’s original mission was explicitly accelerationist: “to accelerate toward artificial intelligence”.

• The text provides a comprehensive list of citations linking major AI organizations like OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepMind to the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
• It highlights the 'TESCREAL' framework, connecting modern AI safety and accelerationism to older eugenicist and utopian ideologies.
• Prominent industry figures like Sam Altman and Ray Kurzweil are cited regarding the perceived inevitability of a technological Singularity.
• The references document a significant concern among researchers regarding 'existential risk,' with some estimating a nearly 50% chance of humanity failing within a decade of building powerful AI.
• The citations track the evolution of AI from technical toolkits like OpenAI Gym to broader societal governance and 'superalignment' initiatives.

The idea that the Singularity is “unstoppable” or “inevitable” is strongly emphasized in Kurzweil’s work, as when he writes that “the Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process.”

• The text provides a comprehensive list of citations linking major AI figures like Sam Altman and Ilya Sutskever to the concept of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
• It references the 'TESCREAL' bundle, a framework connecting modern AI development to ideologies like eugenics and utopianism.
• The citations highlight a growing 'AI Panic Campaign' and public debates regarding the safety and governance of superintelligence.
• Prominent open letters and testimonies are cited as evidence of the industry's focus on existential risks and the need for a pause in giant AI experiments.
• The bibliography connects technical AI progress with philosophical and historical movements, including liberal eugenics and transhumanism.

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

• The text provides a comprehensive list of academic and journalistic references linking AI safety, transhumanism, and historical eugenics.
• Key citations explore the 'TESCREAL' bundle, suggesting a connection between modern artificial general intelligence (AGI) goals and utopian ideologies.
• Several entries highlight the ethical risks of AI, including the 'stochastic parrots' critique and the encoding of malignant stereotypes in multimodal datasets.
• The bibliography documents the influence of billionaire-backed networks on AI policy and the financial investment of major corporations like Microsoft in OpenAI.
• Historical perspectives on eugenics in Britain and America are included to provide a lineage for contemporary transhumanist and 'posthuman' aspirations.

Syed Mustafa Ali, 2019. “‘White crisis’ and/as ‘existential risk,’ the entangled apocalypticism of artificial intelligence,” Zygon, volume 54, number 1, pp. 207–224.

• The text provides a comprehensive list of academic and journalistic references focusing on the work of Nick Bostrom and the development of transhumanist thought.
• Key philosophical themes include existential risks, the ethics of cognitive enhancement, and the concept of 'astronomical waste' regarding delayed technological progress.
• Recent citations highlight the emergence of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), specifically referencing early experiments with GPT-4 and the 'sparks' of AGI.
• The references connect Silicon Valley ideologies like 'longtermism' and 'effective altruism' to contemporary political influence, such as UK AI safety plans.
• The bibliography touches on the darker intersections of technology, including the historical influence of eugenics on statistics and ethical controversies in AI training datasets.

Nick Bostrom, 2003. “Astronomical waste: The opportunity cost of delayed technological development,” Utilitas, volume 15, pp. 308–314.

• The bibliography highlights the 'TESCREAL' bundle, a set of ideologies linking transhumanism, longtermism, and effective altruism to modern AI development.
• Prominent tech figures like Elon Musk and Sam Bankman-Fried are cited in relation to existential risk, space colonization, and the pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
• Critical perspectives examine how these ideologies may drive a new cold war with China and exacerbate global inequality through 'hallucinatory' tech hype.
• The text references historical links between eugenics and modern utopian visions, suggesting a continuity in how certain lives are valued over others.
• Legal and ethical frameworks are presented as necessary counters to the rapid, often hazardous, expansion of generative AI and corporate power.

TESCREAL hallucinations: Psychedelic and AI hype as inequality engines.

• This section provides a comprehensive list of references focusing on the intersection of AI safety, effective altruism, and historical eugenics.
• Key citations include Timnit Gebru’s critiques of the 'dangerous brand' of AI safety promoted by effective altruism and the risks of AI sentience hype.
• The text references foundational works on eugenics and hereditary genius, linking classical Greek theories to modern intelligence research.
• It documents the corporate landscape of AI, citing major investments from Amazon and Google into firms like Anthropic and the secretive operations of OpenAI.
• The bibliography highlights the 'TESCREAL' bundle, a framework connecting transhumanism and longtermism to utopian promises of artificial general intelligence.
• Academic and journalistic sources explore the social impacts of AI, including 'ghost work' and the creation of a new global underclass.

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

• The bibliography highlights the intellectual lineage of AGI, linking modern tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman to transhumanist ideologies.
• It references foundational texts on intelligence and class, such as 'The Bell Curve', suggesting a connection between AI development and controversial social theories.
• The sources explore the intersection of AI ethics, morality, and the impact of automated art on human creators.
• A significant portion of the literature focuses on 'artificial whiteness' and the political ideologies embedded within AI systems.
• The list includes critical assessments of AI risk, ranging from Nick Bostrom's 'doomsday invention' to technical safety assurance frameworks.

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

• The text provides a comprehensive bibliography linking the TESCREAL bundle to historical and modern intellectual movements.
• Key sources explore the intersection of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the promise of a post-biological utopia.
• References include foundational works on Effective Altruism and its evolution into a billion-dollar philanthropic force.
• The bibliography highlights critical perspectives on AI, including its environmental costs and potential for fascist applications.
• Several citations connect modern intelligence research to controversial histories of eugenics and IQ testing.
• The list documents the transition of AI from academic research projects to a central pillar of modern technological prophecy.

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

• The text provides a comprehensive list of academic and journalistic references concerning the development and ethical implications of artificial intelligence.
• Key citations highlight the technical milestones of AI, such as DeepMind's human-level control through reinforcement learning.
• Several entries focus on the labor and social costs of AI, including the use of low-wage Kenyan workers to moderate ChatGPT content.
• The bibliography links modern AI ambitions to historical and philosophical movements like eugenics, transhumanism, and the 'TESCREAL' bundle.
• Critical perspectives are included from prominent female researchers and whistleblowers who warned about AI risks before the mainstream boom.
• Extreme technological visions are referenced, such as fatal mind-uploading services and the pursuit of a 'hedonistic imperative' through technology.

A startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is ‘100 percent fatal’.

• The bibliography highlights the intersection of Silicon Valley billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk with the development of major AI labs like DeepMind and OpenAI.
• It documents the tension between rapid AI advancement and regulatory frameworks, specifically noting OpenAI's threats to leave the EU over strict governance.
• The text references the 'TESCREAL' bundle, linking modern artificial general intelligence (AGI) pursuits to historical eugenics and utopian ideologies.
• Financial and corporate instability is noted through the mention of FTX's halted sale of its significant stake in the AI safety startup Anthropic.
• Academic and journalistic sources explore the 'doomerism' movement, where AI creators themselves express existential fears about the technology they are building.

Inside Sam Altman’s world, where truth is stranger than fiction.

• The text provides a comprehensive list of references linking artificial intelligence development to ideologies like longtermism and effective altruism.
• Citations include reports on the legal downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried and the massive financial valuations of AI companies like OpenAI.
• Several sources explore the historical and modern connections between eugenics, human enhancement, and reproductive control.
• Academic and journalistic entries document the fixation of elite institutions on 'AI apocalypse' scenarios and existential risk.
• The bibliography highlights the work of Émile P. Torres regarding the 'TESCREAL' bundle and the pursuit of cosmic utopia through technology.

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

• The text provides a comprehensive list of academic and journalistic references focusing on the intersection of artificial intelligence, longtermism, and existential risk.
• It highlights the work of Émile P. Torres, who critiques the 'longtermist' ideology for its potential neglect of immediate issues like climate change.
• The references connect modern AI development to historical and controversial movements, including eugenics, Russian cosmism, and the far right.
• Key industry figures and foundational technical papers, such as 'Attention is all you need' and profiles of Sam Altman and Elon Musk, are cited to ground the ideological critique in technical reality.
• The bibliography includes reports on the human cost of AI, ranging from exploited labor to psychological impacts and even suicide linked to chatbot interactions.

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

• The text identifies a cluster of ideologies including transhumanism, extropianism, and singularitarianism under the acronym TESCREAL.
• It connects modern AI development goals to historical eugenics and the pursuit of a techno-utopia.
• The authors argue that current AI safety concerns, such as those voiced by Eliezer Yudkowsky, are rooted in these specific philosophical frameworks.
• The research highlights a conflict between warring visions of AI, contrasting utopian promises with systemic risks like racial bias in statistics.
• The paper serves as a critical examination of how elite tech ideologies shape the trajectory of artificial general intelligence.

The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence

• Primary-source analysis argues that eugenic ideals are central to the AGI race, with some modern figures explicitly referencing first-wave eugenicists.
• The TESCREAL bundle underpins much of the “AI safety” community, sharing normative beliefs and a policy agenda about humanity’s future.

While tracing the origins of the AGI race through analyses of primary sources, we found eugenic ideals to be central to this work: such ideals are often explicitly stated, and in some cases first-wave eugenicists are specifically referenced.

• TESCREAL advocates show a recurring concern with race, intelligence, and “dysgenic” pressures, fearing lower-IQ populations may outbreed more “intelligent” groups.
• The Centre for Effective Altruism reportedly used PELTIV to rank people by IQ and potential long-term value to the movement.

Superintelligent robots = Aryans, humans = Jews. The only thing preventing this is sufficiently intelligent robots.

• Foundational AGI definitions rely heavily on IQ-based metrics and the “general intelligence factor” associated with controversial figures like Charles Murray and Linda Gottfredson.
• Key AGI theorists, including Shane Legg and Peter Voss, cited a 1994 Wall Street Journal editorial defending the race-science claims of The Bell Curve.

Why are you relying on eugenic definitions, eugenic concepts, eugenic thinking to inform your work? Why [...] do you want to enshrine these static and limited ways of thinking about humanity and intelligence?

• AGI lacks construct validity because a system meant for “any environment” cannot be faithfully tested for real-world performance.
• The authors argue AI safety is better served by well-scoped, narrow systems than by ill-defined universal machines.

It is a movement created by adherents of the TESCREAL bundle seeking to “safeguard humanity” by, in Altman’s words, building a “magic intelligence in the sky.”