# Transhumanism

> Source: https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/transhumanism
> Updated: 2026-08-05
> Fact-checked: 2026-08-05
> Categories: AI Ethics, AI History, AI Safety, Artificial Intelligence
> License: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) - attribute to "AI Wiki (aiwiki.ai)"
> Cite as: AI Wiki. "Transhumanism." aiwiki.ai, 5 Aug 2026. https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/transhumanism
> From AI Wiki (https://aiwiki.ai), the free encyclopedia of artificial intelligence. Reuse freely with attribution.

**Transhumanism** is an intellectual and cultural movement that holds that the human condition can and should be fundamentally improved through science and technology, in particular through technologies that eliminate aging and greatly enhance human intellectual, physical and psychological capacities. Humanity+, the movement's main membership organization, also defines transhumanism as a second thing: the study of the promises, ramifications and potential dangers of such technologies, and of the ethical questions they raise [1]. The movement has been closely entangled with artificial intelligence since its modern formation in the late 1980s and 1990s, both because machine [superintelligence](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/superintelligence) is one of the enhancements transhumanists anticipate and because several people who helped organize transhumanism went on to shape the contemporary debate over AI risk.

Transhumanism is a contested label. Its advocates present it as a reason-based extension of medicine and humanism; prominent critics have called it dangerous, elitist or a repackaging of eugenics. Because the term serves both as a self-description and as a pejorative, claims about what "transhumanists believe" vary sharply depending on who is making them.

## Core ideas

Four commitments recur across transhumanist writing.

**Human enhancement.** The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines enhancement as "biomedical interventions that are used to improve human form or functioning beyond what is necessary to restore or sustain health," and notes that whether an intervention counts as enhancement often depends on how it is used rather than on the technology itself [2]. The encyclopedia describes "enhancement enthusiasts, often described as transhumanists," as welcoming the possibility that biomedical interventions might transform human nature [2].

**Radical life extension.** The Transhumanist FAQ states that "healthspan-extension and cryonics are therefore high on the transhumanist list of priorities" [1]. Ending involuntary aging, rather than merely treating age-related disease, is the movement's most widely shared practical goal.

**Intelligence augmentation and superintelligence.** The FAQ describes a superintelligence as an intellect "that has the capacity to radically outperform the best human brains in practically every field, including scientific creativity, general wisdom, and social skills," and reports that many transhumanists expect one to be created "within the first half of this century" [1].

**Morphological freedom.** In a talk given at the TransVision 2001 conference in Berlin, the Swedish researcher Anders Sandberg framed morphological freedom as "an extension of one's right to one's body, not just self-ownership but also the right to modify oneself," and stressed that it is a negative right: a right to be permitted to change one's own body, not a claim on others to assist [3].

The 1998 Transhumanist Declaration, later readopted by the Humanity+ board in March 2009, pairs these aspirations with explicit caution. It affirms that humanity's potential is "still mostly unrealized" while also holding that serious risks arise from technology misuse, that "not all change is progress," that reducing existential risks deserves urgent funding, and that moral consideration extends to "all sentience, including humans, non-human animals, and any future artificial intellects" [4].

## History

### Precursors and the coinage of the term

The historical origins of the word are disputed. In his 2005 paper "A History of Transhumanist Thought," published in the Journal of Evolution and Technology, [Nick Bostrom](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/nick_bostrom) writes that "transhumanism" appears to have been first used by the biologist Julian Huxley, the first director-general of UNESCO, and attributes to Huxley's 1927 book Religion Without Revelation the passage: "The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself ... We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps transhumanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature" [5]. Timnit Gebru and Emile P. Torres, writing in First Monday in 2024, quote substantially the same passage but cite Huxley's 1957 essay collection New Bottles for New Wine, and add that the word "may have been coined in 1940 by W. D. Lighthall"; they also note that Huxley served as president of the British Eugenics Society from 1959 to 1962 [6].

Bostrom traces the lineage further back, to J. B. S. Haldane's 1923 essay Daedalus: Science and the Future, which argued for the benefits of controlling human genetics and which he says "became a bestseller and set off a chain reaction of future-oriented discussions" [5]. Other precursors he identifies include Robert Ettinger, whose 1962 book The Prospect of Immortality launched the idea of cryonic suspension, and F. M. Esfandiary, who changed his name to FM-2030, taught future studies at the New School for Social Research in New York in the 1960s, and organized a group of futurists called the UpWingers [5].

### The modern movement

Modern transhumanism took organizational form in California. Max More and Tom Morrow published the first issue of Extropy magazine in 1988 and founded the Extropy Institute in 1992, the term "extropy" being coined as a metaphorical opposite of entropy [5]. Bostrom credits More with writing "the first definition of transhumanism in its modern sense" and with developing extropianism around principles including "boundless expansion," "self-transformation," "dynamic optimism" and "intelligent technology"; extropianism originally had a libertarian flavor, though More later replaced its "spontaneous order" principle with "open society" [5]. More's 1990 definition, reproduced by Humanity+, describes transhumanism as "a class of philosophies of life that seek the continuation and acceleration of the evolution of intelligent life beyond its currently human form and human limitations by means of science and technology, guided by life-promoting principles and values" [1].

The World Transhumanist Association was founded in early 1998 by Nick Bostrom and David Pearce to provide an organizational basis across the political spectrum and, in Bostrom's account, "to develop a more mature and academically respectable form of transhumanism" [5]. Early participants included the sociologist James Hughes, who became secretary, along with Max More, Kathryn Aegis and Anders Sandberg [5]. The association produced the Transhumanist Declaration and the Transhumanist FAQ; Bostrom describes the FAQ, revised as version 2.1 in 2003, as an effort to develop "a broadly based consensus articulation of the basics of responsible transhumanism" written with about one hundred collaborators [7]. The organization later renamed itself Humanity+, which today describes itself as "an educational organization at the forefront of 21st-century thought, examining the implications of artificial intelligence, healthy longevity, and the future of humanity" and still identifies itself in its footer as formerly the WTA [8].

## Relationship to artificial intelligence

### Superintelligence and the singularity

The idea that machine intelligence might rapidly exceed human intelligence predates transhumanism and was absorbed into it. Bostrom's history quotes the statistician I. J. Good, who wrote in 1965 that an "ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an intelligence explosion, and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make" [5]. Vernor Vinge's 1993 paper on the technological singularity predicted: "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended" [5]. Bostrom notes that Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec, [Ray Kurzweil](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/ray_kurzweil) and he himself had put forward reasons for thinking human-level machine intelligence could arrive in the first half of the twenty-first century, and adds that "transhumanists today hold diverging views about the singularity" [5]. The concept of a technological singularity, though strongly associated with transhumanism, is not a required belief within it.

Kurzweil is the strand's best-known popularizer. His 2024 book The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI restates his 1999 prediction that AI will reach human-level intelligence by 2029 and discusses nanobots, connecting human brains to the cloud, and radical life extension [9]. Gebru and Torres, summarizing his position, write that on Kurzweil's account "humans will merge with machines" and that he predicts the singularity will occur in 2045 [6].

### From transhumanist optimism to AI risk

Several figures central to organized transhumanism became central to the case that advanced AI is dangerous, which complicates any simple mapping of transhumanism onto AI optimism. Bostrom, co-founder of the World Transhumanist Association, founded and directed the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford from 2005 to 2024 and published Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies with Oxford University Press in 2014, a book arguing that a superintelligent system would be difficult to control [10]. The institute, whose research areas included existential risk, [AI alignment](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/ai_alignment), AI governance and human enhancement ethics, was closed on April 16, 2024 after the Oxford Faculty of Philosophy decided in late 2023 not to renew the contracts of remaining staff [11]. Bostrom's 2024 book Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World turns to the opposite question, what people would do with their lives if technology solved their problems [10]. [Eliezer Yudkowsky](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/eliezer_yudkowsky), similarly, was associated with extropian and singularitarian circles in the 1990s before becoming a leading advocate of extreme caution about [AGI](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/artificial_general_intelligence) [6].

Gebru and Torres argue that this overlap is not coincidental but structural. Their First Monday paper coins the acronym TESCREAL for "transhumanism, Extropianism, singularitarianism, (modern) cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and longtermism," presents these as overlapping ideologies that "emerged in roughly this order, and many were shaped or founded by the same individuals," and contends that the resulting bundle "has come to animate the AGI race" [6]. They note that the first book on artificial general intelligence, published in 2007 by Cassio Pennachin and Ben Goertzel, was co-authored by a participant in the extropian movement whose stated aim was to create "transhuman AGI," and that Shane Legg, later a co-founder of DeepMind, contributed a chapter to it [6].

### Effective accelerationism

A more recent strand, [effective accelerationism](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/effective_accelerationism) or e/acc, argues for maximally rapid technological development and treats restraint on AI as itself harmful. It is adjacent to rather than identical with transhumanism, but shares the premise that technological transformation of the human situation is desirable. In "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto," published October 16, 2023, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote: "We believe in accelerationism, the conscious and deliberate propulsion of technological development," described AI as "our alchemy, our Philosopher's Stone," and argued that "any deceleration of AI will cost lives" [12]. Gebru and Torres describe e/acc as a variant that emerged after they coined TESCREAL [6].

## Enhancement technologies in practice

**Brain-computer interfaces.** The clearest near-term technology linking transhumanist aspiration to working hardware is the [brain-computer interface](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/brain_computer_interface). On January 29, 2024, [Elon Musk](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/elon_musk) posted that "the first human received an implant from @Neuralink yesterday and is recovering well," reporting "promising neuron spike detection" [13]. That first [Neuralink](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/neuralink) recipient, Noland Arbaugh, was paralyzed from the neck down after a 2016 swimming accident; he uses the implant to control a computer cursor and play video games, telling IEEE Spectrum that the technology made him feel "so independent and so free" and that before the implant he had relied on a mouth-held typing stick and a mouth-controlled joystick [14]. Current clinical BCI work is restorative rather than enhancing, a distinction that transhumanist writing tends to treat as temporary and that bioethical writing treats as morally significant [2].

**Longevity biotech.** Substantial private capital now funds anti-aging research. Altos Labs launched with $3 billion in funding, reported by Chemical & Engineering News on January 23, 2022, with the goal of "using cellular rejuvenation programming to restore cell health and reverse disease, injury, and disabilities"; it is led by Hal Barron, formerly of GlaxoSmithKline, with Rick Klausner as chief scientist and a board including the Nobel laureates Frances Arnold and Jennifer Doudna [15]. Such companies do not generally describe themselves as transhumanist.

**Embryo selection.** Polygenic embryo screening has become a live flashpoint. MIT Technology Review reported on October 16, 2025 that companies including Genomic Prediction, Orchid, Nucleus Genomics and Herasight offer polygenic scoring of IVF embryos, with some marketing screening for intelligence, and that the American College of Medical Genetics has said the practice "has moved too fast with too little evidence"; the report notes that in the United Kingdom the practice is banned outright [16].

**Cryonics.** Alcor Life Extension Foundation, incorporated in California in 1972 by Fred and Linda Chamberlain and now based in Scottsdale, Arizona, states on its website that it has 1,535 members and 263 cryopreserved patients [17]. Cryonics remains outside mainstream medicine, and no cryopreserved human has been revived.

## Political strands

Transhumanism does not map onto a single political position. Bostrom's history describes James Hughes's advocacy of "democratic transhumanism," which combines transhumanist biopolitics with social democratic economics and liberal cultural politics, and which Hughes argues yields the best outcomes by making technologies safe, making them available to everyone, and respecting individual bodily autonomy [5]. Bostrom contrasts this with extropian libertarianism, noting that democratic transhumanism "accords a much bigger role for government in regulating new technologies for safety and ensuring that the benefits will be available to all, not just a wealthy or tech-savvy elite" [5].

## Criticism

**Bioconservative objections.** Bostrom's history records that Francis Fukuyama, a member of the US President's Council on Bioethics, "identified transhumanism as 'the world's most dangerous idea'" [5]. In his Foreign Policy essay, Fukuyama described transhumanism as "a strange liberation movement" whose "crusaders aim much higher than civil rights campaigners, feminists, or gay-rights advocates," wanting "nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints" [18]. His central worry is equality: "The first victim of transhumanism might be equality," he wrote, arguing that societies have painfully learned to draw a line around the human being and that enhancement erodes it, and that "the seeming reasonableness of the project, particularly when considered in small increments, is part of its danger" [18]. Bostrom, replying in Bioethics in 2005, quotes Leon Kass warning that mastering human nature would produce "Homogenization, mediocrity, pacification, drug-induced contentment" and that "Promethean man will become a contented cow," and counters that "nature's gifts are sometimes poisoned and should not always be accepted" [19].

**Eugenics and the TESCREAL critique.** Gebru and Torres argue that the drive to build AGI descends from Anglo-American eugenics by way of transhumanism, and that "many of the very same discriminatory attitudes that animated eugenicists in the past (e.g., racism, xenophobia, classism, ableism, and sexism)" persist in AGI-focused movements. They urge researchers to build systems for "defined tasks for which we can develop safety protocols, rather than attempting to build a presumably all-knowing system such as AGI," and contend that organizations use "the language of 'safety' and 'benefiting humanity' to evade accountability" [6].

The TESCREAL framing is itself contested, including by people inside the movement. James J. Hughes and Eli Sennesh, writing for the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies in June 2023, argued that treating these philosophies as a coordinated bundle "promoted by a cabal of Silicon Valley elites" is a conspiratorial style of analysis, that the framing lops off "all the complicated history, messy debates and ideological diversity" within each tradition, and that "each philosophy has a progressive political wing that has been ignored" [20].

**Equality and access.** The concern that enhancement would entrench advantage is not confined to bioconservatives. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy identifies fairness as a standing objection, noting the argument that "widespread social acceptance of enhancement interventions would exacerbate inequalities," alongside objections from authenticity, from human nature, and disputes over whether biomedical moral enhancement is either desirable or feasible [2].

**Feasibility.** Many of transhumanism's defining technologies remain unrealized. No human has been revived from cryopreservation, mind uploading and whole brain emulation remain theoretical, and independent scientists dispute the predictive power of polygenic scores for complex traits such as intelligence [16][17]. Bostrom himself observes that early AI researchers "turned out to be overoptimistic about the timescale" for human-level machine intelligence [5], a caution that applies to transhumanist forecasting generally. Whether an uploaded or artificial mind would be conscious at all remains an open problem in [AI consciousness](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/ai_consciousness).

## See also

- [Superintelligence](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/superintelligence)
- [Artificial general intelligence](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/artificial_general_intelligence)
- [Nick Bostrom](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/nick_bostrom)
- [Ray Kurzweil](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/ray_kurzweil)
- [Brain-computer interface](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/brain_computer_interface)
- [Effective accelerationism](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/effective_accelerationism)
- [AI safety](https://aiwiki.ai/wiki/ai_safety)

## References

1. Humanity+. "Transhumanist FAQ." https://www.humanityplus.org/transhumanist-faq
2. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. "Human Enhancement." First published April 7, 2015; substantive revision November 13, 2025. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enhancement/
3. Anders Sandberg. "Morphological Freedom: Why We not just Want it, but Need it." Talk given at TransVision 2001, Berlin, June 22-24, 2001. https://www.aleph.se/Nada/Texts/MorphologicalFreedom.htm
4. Humanity+. "The Transhumanist Declaration." Originally 1998; readopted by the Humanity+ board, March 2009. https://www.humanityplus.org/the-transhumanist-declaration
5. Nick Bostrom. "A History of Transhumanist Thought." Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 14, Issue 1. April 2005. https://www.jetpress.org/volume14/bostrom.html
6. Timnit Gebru and Emile P. Torres. "The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence." First Monday, Vol. 29, No. 4. April 2024. https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/13636
7. Nick Bostrom. Home page, publications listing, entry for "The Transhumanist FAQ, revised version 2.1" (2003). https://nickbostrom.com/
8. Humanity+. Organization homepage. https://www.humanityplus.org/
9. Penguin Random House. "The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI" by Ray Kurzweil. Published June 25, 2024. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/535433/the-singularity-is-nearer-by-ray-kurzweil/
10. Nick Bostrom. Home page, listing Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (Oxford University Press, 2014) and Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World (Ideapress, 2024). https://nickbostrom.com/
11. Future of Humanity Institute. Closure statement. April 16, 2024. https://www.futureofhumanityinstitute.org/
12. Marc Andreessen. "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto." Andreessen Horowitz. October 16, 2023. https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
13. Elon Musk (@elonmusk). Post on X. January 29, 2024. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1752098683024220632
14. Edd Gent. "The BCI User Experience: Living With Brain Implants." IEEE Spectrum. April 14, 2026. https://spectrum.ieee.org/bci-user-experience
15. Michael McCoy. "Altos Labs launches with $3 billion for cellular rejuvenation." Chemical & Engineering News, Vol. 100, Issue 3. January 23, 2022. https://cen.acs.org/business/start-ups/Altos-Labs-launches-3-billion/100/i3
16. Julia Black. "The race to make the perfect baby is creating an ethical mess." MIT Technology Review. October 16, 2025. https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/10/16/1125159/ethics-embryo-screening-reproduction-baby/
17. Alcor Life Extension Foundation. "About Alcor." https://www.alcor.org/about/
18. Francis Fukuyama. "Transhumanism." Foreign Policy. Page dated October 23, 2009. https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/23/transhumanism/
19. Nick Bostrom. "In Defense of Posthuman Dignity." Bioethics, Vol. 19, No. 3 (2005): 202-214. https://nickbostrom.com/ethics/dignity
20. James J. Hughes and Eli Sennesh. "Conspiracy Theories, Left Futurism, and the Attack on TESCREAL." Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. June 12, 2023. https://medium.com/institute-for-ethics-and-emerging-technologies/conspiracy-theories-left-futurism-and-the-attack-on-tescreal-456972fe02aa