The Trajectory
What should be the trajectory of intelligence beyond humanity?
The Trajectory pull covers realpolitik on artificial general intelligence and the posthuman transition - by asking tech, policy, and AI research leaders the hard questions about what's after man, and how we should define and create a worthy successor (danfaggella.com/worthy). Hosted by Daniel Faggella.
Episodes
66 episodes
Stuart Kauffman - Why Open-Ended Evolution Has Never Happened in a Machine (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 5)
Stuart Kauffman has spent over 50 years asking a deceptively simple question: what actually makes something alive? His answer is that greater computational sophistication alone does not make AI alive.In this installment of the Stewarding...
Davidad – Merger, Wisdom, and the Fate of Man (Worthy Successor, Episode 33)
Davidad (David Dalrymple) recently stepped down as a Programme Director at the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), where he led work on mathematically verifiable, "safeguarded" AI. Now unaffiliated, he joins the show to make his...
Denis Noble - Life is “Fluid” in Ways Machines Still Aren’t (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 4)
Denis Noble argues that water isn't just biology's medium - it may be the very reason life is possible at all.In this installment of the Stewarding the Flame series, the Oxford physiologist and founding figure of systems biology explore...
Paolo Ardoino - Merger or Obsolescence - The Future for Humanity (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 3)
Brain-computer interfaces are often discussed as futuristic gadgets. Paolo Ardoino argues they're something far more important: humanity's best chance of keeping pace with increasingly capable AI.In this installment of the Stewarding th...
Lee Cronin - Living Process Flourishes if We Make the Present “Thick” (Stewarding the Flame, Ep 2)
This installment of the Stewarding the Flame series is an interview with Lee Cronin, Regius Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, founder and CEO of Chemify, and one of the world's leading researchers in the origins of life, syst...
Michael Levin - Making the Process-of-Life Flourish in Bio and Beyond (Stewarding the Flame, Ep 1)
This installment of the Stewarding the Flame series is an interview with Michael Levin, Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts University, Director of the Allen Discovery Center, and one of the world's leading researchers in developmental ...
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Hod Lipson - Beyond Biology: AGI Minds in Competition (Worthy Successor, Episode 32)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Hod Lipson, Professor of Engineering at Columbia University and one of the world's leading researchers in robotics, machine self-modeling, and artificial intelligence.
Henry Shevlin – The Life Force Beyond Biology (Worthy Successor, Episode 31)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Henry Shevlin, philosopher of cognitive science and AI ethicist at the University of Cambridge.In this conversation, Henry argues that many of the qualities we ass...
Benjamin Bratton - Planetary Computation and the Future of Life (Worthy Successor, Episode 30)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Benjamin Bratton, Professor of Philosophy of Technology at UC San Diego and Director of Antikythera.In this conversation, Benjamin argues that intelligence is not ...
Terrence Deacon - AI Is a “Deep Fake of Intelligence” (Worthy Successor, Episode 29)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Terrence Deacon, an emeritus professor of cognitive science and anthropology from UC Berkeley.In this conversation, Terrence argues that current large language mod...
Vincent C. Müller - AI Is Accelerating - But Toward What? (Worthy Successor, Episode 28)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Vincent C. Müller, Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Ethics of AI at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg.In this conversation, Vincent discusses how artificial ...
Lee Spector - The Next Phase of Evolution Is Artificial (Worthy Successor, Episode 27)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Lee Spector, a professor at Amherst College and a researcher in evolutionary computation, whose work applies concepts like variation and selection to the development of in...
Aza Raskin - Why AGI Demands New Global Coordination (AGI Governance, Episode 12)
This is an interview with Aza Raskin, co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology and co-founder of the Earth Species Project. His work has focused on the societal impacts of technology systems and how incentives shape large-scale human beha...
Ben Goertzel - The Primordial Soup of AGI Minds (Worthy Successor, Episode 26)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Ben Goertzel, founder of SingularityNET and one of the earliest and most persistent thinkers in artificial general intelligence, with decades of work spanning AI architect...
Luciano Floridi - How Life Could Flourish in the Information Ocean (Worthy Successor, Episode 25)
This installment of the Worthy Successor series features Luciano Floridi, John K. Castle Professor of Cognitive Science at Yale University and Director of the Digital Ethics Center at Yale. Luciano is widely recognized as one of the leading phi...
Weaver Weinbaum - Designing Intelligence for Freedom and Care (Worthy Successor, Episode 24)
This episode of the Worthy Successor series features Weaver Weinbaum, an independent researcher and founder of NUNET. Weaver’s work sits at the intersection of philosophy, engineering, and the study of intelligence. In this episode,...
Francis Heylighen - The Self-Organizing Universe After Humans (Worthy Successor, Episode 23)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Francis Heylighen, a professor at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and director of the Research Centre St. Leo Apostel. Francis is one of the world's leading theorists...
Stephen Wolfram - In a Sea of Complexity, Does a “Successor” Exist? (Worthy Successor, Episode 22)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Research, creator of Mathematica and the Wolfram Language, and a pioneer in computation and complexity.Stephen reframes intelli...
John Smart - Evolution from Cells to Super-intelligence (Worthy Successor, Episode 21)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with John Smart, Director of the EvoDevo Institute and a longtime futures theorist whose work spans accelerating change, developmental systems, and the long-term trajectory of ...
Susan Schneider - Intelligence Is Everywhere, Consciousness Maybe Not (Worthy Successor, Episode 20)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is a conversation with Dr. Susan Schneider, a philosopher of mind and consciousness researcher whose work focuses on AI consciousness, mind uploading, and the long-run future of intelligence.<...
Brian Thomas Swimme - Life Is Bigger Than Humanity (Worthy Successor, Episode 19)
This installment of the Worthy Successor series is a conversation with Brian Thomas Swimme, a cosmologist and philosopher of science, and a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.Brian’s work begins f...
David Sloan Wilson - Darwinian Forces Shape the Earth Superorganism (Worthy Successor, Episode 18)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with David Sloan Wilson, an American evolutionary biologist, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at Binghamton University, and co-founder o...
Michael Johnson - Symmetry, Beauty, and the Shape of Consciousness (Worthy Successor, Episode 17)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Michael Johnson, a philosopher and neuroscientist who describes himself as working on "how to turn consciousness into a real science." Mike is known for his formal...
Robin Hanson - A Successor Must be Adaptive (Worthy Successor, Episode 16)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Robin Hanson - Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, economist, polymath, and author of The Age of Em. Hanson is one of the few thinkers who approac...
Joe Carlsmith - A Wiser, AI-Powered Civilization is the “Successor” (Worthy Successor, Episode 15)
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Joe Carlsmith, a senior advisor at Open Philanthropy, whose work spans AI alignment, moral uncertainty, and the philosophical foundations of value. In this conversation, J...
