posthuman

• post-human

From post- +‎ human.

posthuman (comparative more posthuman, superlative most posthuman)

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

   Antonym: prehuman

   Near-synonym: transhuman (sometimes synonymous)

   posthuman intelligence

   • 2002 April 2, Nicholas Wade, “A Dim View of a ‘Posthuman Future’”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

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

   • 2016 October 3, Tad Friend, “Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny”, in The New Yorker‎^[2]:

     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.

   • 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:

     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 February 10, Ross Douthat, “The Left Needs a Sharper A.I. Politics”, in The New York Times‎^[3], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     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.

     (Can we archive this URL?)

posthuman (plural posthumans)

1. A supposed being of this kind.

   Antonym: prehuman

   Near-synonym: transhuman (sometimes synonymous)

   • 2008 August 26, John Tierney, quoting Vernor Vinge, “Technology That Outthinks Us: A Partner or a Master?”, in The New York Times‎^[4], →ISSN:

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