Peter Thiel’s doping games and tech’s quest for a superhuman

^{Photo from Hubert Burda Media via Flickr licensed under CC by NC-SA 2.0}

Peter Thiel’s Enhanced Games promise to be an annual sporting event that lets athletes use performance-enhancing drugs, nicknamed the pro-doping Olympics (which some would scoff isn’t all that different from the real thing). The games have captured imaginations and, now, money. But behind them is a broader, unsettling effort spearheaded by tech billionaires like Thiel to use science and technology to enhance the human race.

Their vision sounds alluring: If we can lengthen our lifespans and augment our brains and productivity, we’ll live a life of leisure, powered by robots and funded by universal basic income. But they rarely mention that utopia could come with a price, too, eroding human agency and perhaps even worsening inequality.

The list of tech titans chasing human enhancement is long. Thiel, best known for being an early investor in Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook, has poured millions of dollars into longevity research and has reportedly signed up for cryonic preservation. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman also plans to preserve his brain...