Better Humans, Better Machines: Eugenic Ideology in Transhumanism and AI Futures

This work in progress traces the ideological afterlife of eugenics from early 20th-century science to today’s AI rhetoric. Using bibliometric and NLP methods on 5,000+ historical articles, we show how eugenic notions of ranking and “improving” humanity persist—rebranded within transhumanist and TESCREAL movements and encoded in generative-AI systems. Our findings highlight the urgent need for epistemic diversity and socially responsible design to prevent algorithmic systems from perpetuating old hierarchies under new technological guises.