According to critics of these philosophies, TESCREAL describes overlapping movements endorsed by prominent people in the tech industry to provide intellectual backing to pursue and prioritize projects including
artificial general intelligence (AGI),
life extension, and
space colonization. Science fiction author
Charles Stross, using the example of space colonization, argued that the ideologies allow billionaires to pursue massive personal projects driven by a right-wing interpretation of science fiction by arguing that not to pursue such projects poses an
existential risk to society. Gebru and Torres write that, using the threat of extinction, TESCREALists can justify "attempts to build unscoped systems which are inherently unsafe". Philosopher Yogi Hale Hendlin has argued that by both ignoring the human causes of societal problems and over-engineering solutions, TESCREALists ignore the context in which many problems arise. Camille Sojit Pejcha wrote in
Document Journal that TESCREAL is a tool for tech elites to concentrate power. Gebru, Torres, and others have likened TESCREAL to a secular religion due to its parallels to Christian theology and
eschatology. Writers in
Current Affairs compared these philosophies and the ensuing
techno-optimism to "any other monomaniacal faith... in which doubters are seen as enemies and beliefs are accepted without evidence". They argue pursuing TESCREAL would prevent an actual equitable shared future.
Artificial general intelligence Much of the discourse about
existential risk from AGI occurs among those whom Gebru and Torres identify as supporters of the TESCREAL ideologies. TESCREALists are either considered "AI accelerationists", who consider AI the only way to pursue a utopian future where problems are solved, or "AI
doomers", who consider
AI likely to be unaligned to human survival and likely to cause human extinction.
Claimed bias against minorities Gebru and Torres claim that TESCREAL ideologies directly originate from 20th-century
eugenics Others have similarly argued that the TESCREAL ideologies developed from earlier philosophies that were used to justify mass murder and genocide. Some prominent figures who have contributed to TESCREAL ideologies have been alleged to be racist and sexist.
Criticism and debate Writing in
Asterisk, a magazine related to effective altruism, Ozy Brennan criticized Gebru's and Torres's grouping of different philosophies as if they were a "monolithic" movement. Brennan argues Torres has misunderstood these different philosophies, and has taken
philosophical thought experiments out of context. Similarly, Oliver Habryka of
LessWrong has criticized the concept, saying: "I've never in my life met a cosmist; apparently I'm great friends with them. Apparently, I'm like in cahoots [with them]." At
Radio New Zealand, politics writer Danyl McLauchlan said that while some members of these groups want to engineer superhumans, others, like the effective altruists (who generally want to help the poor), are astounded to be lumped into a malevolent eugenics conspiracy. James Pethokoukis, of the
American Enterprise Institute, disagrees with criticizing proponents of TESCREAL. He argues that the tech billionaires criticized in a
Scientific American article for allegedly espousing TESCREAL have significantly advanced society. In the blog for the technoprogressive
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Eli Sennesh and
James Hughes have argued that TESCREAL is a left-wing
conspiracy theory that groups disparate philosophies together without understanding their
mutually exclusive tenets. == Alleged adherents ==