In 2025, parents here are paying up to $50,000 for new genetic-testing services that include promises to screen embryos for IQ. The fascination with what some call “genetic optimization” reflects deeper Silicon Valley beliefs about merit and success. “I think they have a perception that they are smart and they are accomplished, and they deserve to be where they are because they have ‘good genes,’” said Sasha Gusev, a statistical geneticist at Harvard Medical School. “Now they have a tool where they think that they can do the same thing in their kids as well, right?”…

The growing IQ fetish is sparking debate, with bioethicists raising alarms about the new genetic-screening services. “Is it fair? This is something a lot of people worry about,” said Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences at Stanford University. “It is a great science fiction plot: The rich people create a genetically super caste that takes over and the rest of us are proles.” Yet in Silicon Valley, where top preschools require IQ tests and openness to novelty runs high, parents aren’t burdened by moral quandaries of using technology to select for their children’s intelligence before birth…

The most unusual motive for making smarter babies is emerging from a brainy group of computer scientists in Berkeley. Known as the rationalists, they fear that AI poses an existential risk to humanity. “They think one of the ways that possibly we could make safe AI is if we had smarter humans building them,” said Hsu, the Genomic Prediction co-founder. “Some of these guys are committed to a long-term eugenics program where they create smarter humans, and the smarter humans are the ones that make AI safe.”  

Excerpt from Zusha Elinson, Inside Silicon Valley’s Growing Obsession With Having Smarter Babies