In Whose Image: Technocratic Desires as Eugenic Dysphoria

When tech companies describe their products as in “alignment with human values,” an immediate red flag should be raised. I argue that AI alignment discourse reproduces the same perfectionistic, technocratic and implicitly eugenic logic underwriting Silicon Valley’s multitudinous transhumanistic endeavors. Behind the veil of human values hides an insidious mythos treasured by a powerful technocratic minority. Encoding these particular human values will intensify existing structural inequalities and reifies the (im)morality of the technocratic elite. This paper investigates the motivations behind Silicon Valley’s definition of the human and which human futures will be prioritized as a result. In the following sections, I outline the current discourses within Silicon Valley, already prioritizing an idealized human who is in the image of the technocrat, leaving the disenfranchised even more vulnerable.