This is kind of a weird article that mashed together different strands of thought. For a start >Peter Thiel and his friends feel they no longer belong to our

This is kind of a weird article that mashed together different strands of thought. For a start >Peter Thiel and his friends feel they no longer belong to our species. is basically bollocks. He still thinks he's human and the author is making stuff up. I think because Thiel is right wing and the author thinks that's bad. The species bit seems to rest on a bit in an interview: >Douthat: It seems very clear to me that a number of people deeply involved in artificial intelligence see it as a mechanism for transhumanism—for transcendence of our mortal flesh—and either some kind of creation of a successor species or some kind of merger of mind and machine. Do you think that’s all irrelevant fantasy? Or do you think it’s just hype? Do you think people are raising money by pretending that we’re going to build a machine god? Is it hype? Is it delusion? Is it something you worry about? and then in answer to those six complex questions Thiel goes kinda um, er, dunno, it's complicated. I'm not sure that really makes the authors point. Also I've been casually interested in transhumanism for ages as have a lot of people. It's not exclusively a billionaire thing. I think "transcendence of our mortal flesh" through tech is maybe more a sci-fi or futurist enthusiasm.