TESCREAL

The seven ideologies named by the acronym

TESCREAL is an acronym coined by the computer scientist Timnit Gebru and the philosopher Émile P. Torres for a group of overlapping futurist ideologies: transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism and longtermism. Gebru and Torres began using the term in 2023, and set out their argument in the paper "The TESCREAL bundle: Eugenics and the promise of utopia through artificial general intelligence", published in First Monday in April 2024.

Argument

Gebru and Torres argue that the seven ideologies share a common history and a shared vision of a technological utopia, and that they trace back to twentieth-century eugenics. In their account, the drive to build artificial general intelligence is motivated by this bundle of beliefs, which both promises a utopia and warns of an AI apocalypse.

The term is used mainly by critics of these movements. Some people associated with them reject it, arguing that it groups distinct and sometimes conflicting views under a single label.

See also

• Effective Altruism
• Longtermism
• Nick Bostrom
• Eliezer Yudkowsky
• Effective Accelerationism