posthuman

comparative more posthuman · superlative most posthuman · alternative post-human

1. Succeeding human beings as presently defined; more than, or beyond, what is human.

   posthuman intelligence

   5 more examples

   Near-synonym: transhuman (sometimes synonymous)

   Despite his title, Dr. [Francis] Fukuyama has no taste for a rerun of history and believes a posthuman future is one to avoid.

   2002 April 2, Nicholas Wade, “A Dim View of a ‘Posthuman Future’”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   You could imagine this metropolis as an exemplary post-human city-state, run on A.I.—a twenty-first-century Athens—or as a gated community for the élite, a fortress against the coming chaos.

   2016 October 3, Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”, in The New Yorker

   The big banal shed full of humming and twinkling machines is arguably the first real major post-human building type, an architecture built not for us but for the computing power we are coding and training (and which will be coding itself) to outsmart, even supplant us.

   2026 January 17, Edwin Heathcote, “Welcome to a post-human world”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 13

   But there may be strong pressure to go the other way — to surrender, in the name of autonomy and equity and anti-speciesism, to a future where humans and bots are treated interchangeably, where simulated relationships are assumed to be equal to real ones if enough people prefer them, and where the post-human ambitions of some technologists are taken up by the would-be spokesmen for the masses.

   2026 February 10, Ross Douthat, “The Left Needs a Sharper A.I. Politics”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC

   Synonyms: transhuman · Antonyms: prehuman

plural posthumans · alternative post-human

1. A supposed being of this kind.

   Near-synonym: transhuman (sometimes synonymous)

   1 more example

   Well, Dr. Vinge said, it’s possible that artificial post-humans would use us the way we’ve used oxen and donkeys.

   2008 August 26, John Tierney, quoting Vernor Vinge, “Technology That Outthinks Us: A Partner or a Master?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Synonyms: transhuman · Antonyms: prehuman