In an open-access essay at IAI.TV, theoretical physicist and neuroscientist Àlex Gómez-Marín goes after Silicon Valley transhumanism (the Singularity and all that):

By pursuing the so-called technological singularity, transhumanists want to become more-than-human. Triumphantly pledging our transcendence via the machines, they seem to also want to make humanity obsolete. Or worse: to extinguish our animal species into the machine. They are indeed convinced they can solve the problem of life, the universe, and everything. But one wonders: Is language an autocomplete process? Is thought simply problem-solving? What is intelligence, after all? Is creativity automatable? Is life mechanizable? Is consciousness digitizable? Is reality a simulation? Really!?

“The false religion of transhumanism,” November 22, 2024

He spells out the “religion” part of “false religion”:

Dressed as a technological program, transhumanism offers a set of goods that are typically the province of religions: a gospel to evangelize, a series of messiahs, a prophecy (apocalypse included), and the prospects of redemption, salvation, and even liberation from the flesh, ultimately achieving immortality. As the American essayist Meghan O’Gieblyn puts it: “what makes the transhumanist movement so seductive is that it promises to restore, through science, the transcendent hopes that science itself has obliterated”. Indeed, transhumanists want to have their scientistic secular cake and let their pseudo-religion eat it too. “Transhumanism”

And the central weakness?

At the very core, I believe the problem is an anthropological one. Regardless of technological fireworks, theological copycats, and metaphysical hangovers, the key question is not so much whether machines can become conscious and/or will take over the world (ushering utopia, dystopia, or ectopia). The central question is this: what is a human being? We are back to Plotinus in asking: “But we — who are we?” This is an impossible question whose answer I can only hope to somewhat hint here, perhaps apophatically, namely, by emphasising who we are not. “Transhumanism”

The transhumanists are not kidding

In other news, we learn from Julia Brown and Daphne Martschenko at the San Francisco Standard that “Silicon Valley’s tech elite want to make superbabies. They shouldn’t.” Some are marketing pre-implantation genetic testing (presumably discarding the neo-kids who don’t show the qualities they are looking for?), Brown and Martschenko warn:

Clinically, PGT-P has limited accuracy and utility. And concerns abound about entrepreneurs peddling snake oil, or of supporters embracing eugenics. But another drawback underlies PGT-P: the folly of parents who try to achieve total control over their children. The technology promotes a very narrow idea of health and success, and undermines the social conditions in which people reach their potential. November 23, 2024

They may have to get used to raising natural kids after all.