The Trajectory
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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.
Afleveringen
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Eric Smith - AI May be a Prosthetic for the Living Process (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 9)
23 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 50 min
This installment of the Stewarding the Flame series is an interview with Eric Smith, Specially Appointed Professor at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI), Institute of Science Tokyo, External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute, and co-author with Harold Morowitz of The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere. Lees meer
Eric argues that sorting the world into living and non-living things is a category error. He asks whether the difference between a planet with life and one without it should be sought in an initially living thing or in the biosphere as a whole, framing the emergence of life as a planetary transition.
We explore individuation as a phase transition, Eric’s argument for the importance of life’s chemical basis and the limits of what we can explain, whether engineered systems can be a model for the biosphere, and what Preston Cloud’s proposed account of oxygen-driven boom-and-bust cycles suggests about disruptive innovation and keeping our options open.
This conversation asks how we should understand the living state and assess the engineered systems we are building in the age of AGI.
The interview is the ninth installment of The Trajectory’s newest series, Stewarding the Flame, where we explore what intelligence is and ask what “flame” life possesses that non-life does not.
This episode referred to the following other essays and resources:
– Stewarding the Flame - How to Build an Ideal Future for Intelligence: https://danfaggella.com/stewarding
– The Origin and Nature of Life on Earth: The Emergence of the Fourth Geosphere (Eric Smith & Harold J. Morowitz): https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316348772
– Stuart Kauffman – Why Open-Ended Evolution Has Never Happened in a Machine (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 5): https://danfaggella.com/kauffman1
– Blaise Agüera y Arcas – AGI Symbiosis and the Arrow of Intelligence (Worthy Successor, Episode 14): https://danfaggella.com/arcas1
– Nick Bostrom – AGI That Saves Room for Us (The Tra… -
N. Katherine Hayles - AI as Our Inextricable Symbionts (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 8)
9 oktober 2026 · 1 uur 30 min
This installment of the Stewarding the Flame series is an interview with N. Katherine Hayles, Distinguished Research Professor of English at UCLA and James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emerita of Literature at Duke University, and author of How We Became Posthuman, Unthought, and Bacteria to AI. Lees meer
Katherine defines life through cognition: a process of interpreting information in contexts that connect it with meaning, marked by five criteria she calls SIRAL (sensing, interpreting, responding flexibly, anticipating, and learning). By that measure, plants and bacteria are cognitive, AI systems are cognitive with important caveats, and tornadoes and avalanches have tremendous agency but no choice.
We explore why she sees life as the pathway to complexity, why she considers AI a symbiont rather than a living system, why the technosphere is currently degrading the biosphere, and how natural computing, the understanding of biological mechanisms as analog computation, may help build bridges between the two.
The interview is the eighth installment of The Trajectory's newest series, Stewarding the Flame, where we explore what intelligence is and ask what "flame" life possesses that non-life does not.
This episode referred to the following other essays and resources:
-- Stewarding the Flame - How to Build an Ideal Future for Intelligence: https://danfaggella.com/stewarding
-- Lee Cronin - Living Process Flourishes if We Make the Present “Thick” (Stewarding the Flame, Ep 2): https://danfaggella.com/cronin1
-- Stephen Wolfram - In a Sea of Complexity, Does a “Successor” Exist? (Worthy Successor, Episode 22): https://danfaggella.com/wolfram1
-- Stuart Kauffman - Why Open-Ended Evolution Has Never Happened in a Machine (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 5): https://danfaggella.com/kauffman1
-- Luciano Floridi - How Life Could Flourish in the Information Ocean (Worthy Successor, Episode 25): https://danfaggella.com/floridi1
-- Joe Carlsmith - A Wiser, AI-Powered Civilization is t… -
David Pearce - A Negative Utilitarian Vision for AGI (Worthy Successor, Ep. 34)
25 september 2026 · 1 uur 47 min
This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with David Pearce, the philosopher who wrote The Hedonistic Imperative in 1995 and co-founded the World Transhumanist Association with Nick Bostrom in 1998. Lees meer
In this conversation, David argues that the pleasure-pain axis discloses the world's inbuilt metric of disvalue, and that our overriding ethical obligation as a species is to phase out the biology of suffering throughout the living world and replace it with information-sensitive gradients of bliss. He also explains why he believes phenomenal binding, not consciousness per se, is what makes animal nervous systems special, and why he regards digital mind as an oxymoron.
We talk about non-materialist physicalism, the binding problem, whether any value exists beyond valence, reprogramming predators, and what he hopes the builders of AGI will prioritize.
The interview is the thirty-fourth installment of The Trajectory's second series, Worthy Successor, where we explore the kinds of posthuman intelligences that deserve to steer the future beyond humanity.
This episode referred to the following other essays and resources:
-- A Worthy Successor - The Purpose of AGI: https://danfaggella.com/worthy
-- David Pearce Interview on the Higher Hedonic Future: https://danfaggella.com/david-pearce-interview-on-the-higher-hedonic-future
-- The Hedonistic Imperative, David Pearce (1995): https://www.hedweb.com
-- Peter Singer – Optimizing the Future for Joy, and the Exploration of the Good (Worthy Successor, Episode 10): https://danfaggella.com/singer1
-- Denis Noble – Life is "Fluid" in Ways Machines Still Aren't (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 4): https://danfaggella.com/noble1
-- Negative Utilitarianism Won't Take Us Where We Need to Go: https://danfaggella.com/nu
-- Stewarding the Flame - How to Build an Ideal Future for Intelligence: https://danfaggella.com/stewarding
-- Undergirding: https://danfaggella.com/undergirdingListen to this episode on The Tra…
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Eörs Szathmáry - Major Evolutionary Transitions and AGI's Impact (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 7)
11 september 2026 · 1 uur 20 min
Eörs Szathmáry co-developed, with the late John Maynard Smith, the theory of major transitions in evolution - the framework for understanding how life has repeatedly reorganized itself into higher levels of complexity across nearly 4 billion years. He's also a co-author, alongside Viktor Müller and Luc Steels, of a recent PNAS paper arguing that AI may be on the verge of undergoing a major transition of its own. Lees meer
In this conversation, Eörs lays out what actually constitutes a major transition, what life looks like at its most stripped-down, operational level, and why he believes the real danger of advanced AI isn't superintelligence or consciousness - it's evolvability. We get into the chemistry of life's origins, a precautionary framework borrowed from infectious disease research, and what the biggest transitions in the history of life can tell us about the one that may be coming next.
This conversation explores what makes life, life, and why evolvability - not consciousness - may be the real threat posed by advanced AI, as we enter the age of AGI.
The interview is the seventh installment of The Trajectory's newest series, Stewarding the Flame, where we explore what intelligence is and ask what "flame" life possesses that non-life does not.
This episode referred to the following other essays and resources:
-- Stewarding the Flame - How to Build an Ideal Future for Intelligence: https://danfaggella.com/stewarding
-- Maynard Smith & Szathmáry, "On the likelihood of habitable worlds," Nature (1996): https://doi.org/10.1038/384107a0
-- David Sloan Wilson – Darwinian Forces Shape the Earth Superorganism (Worthy Successor, Episode 18): https://danfaggella.com/wilson1
-- Lee Smolin's theory of cosmological natural selection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_natural_selection
-- Tibor Gánti's chemoton model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemoton
-- Stuart Kauffman – Why Open-Ended Evolution Has Never Happened in a Machine (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 5): h… -
Connor Glass – Merging with Machines to Steward the Flame (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 6)
28 augustus 2026 · 2 uur 5 min
This installment of the Stewarding the Flame series is an interview with Connor Glass, founder and CEO of Phantom Neuro, a company building implantable technology that interfaces with the body's peripheral nervous system. Lees meer
Connor argues that artificial intelligence already meets his own definition of life, and that biological evolution has effectively hit its ceiling - the cyborg, not the pure robot, is what he sees as humanity's next stage, with implantable technology (not wearables) as the actual delivery mechanism. At the same time, he's emphatic about staying "team human."
We explore how Connor defines life and where AI fits into that definition, what role human-machine interfaces should play in keeping humans relevant as the "torch" of the living process, and what he'd tell the people building AGI about the risks of moving too fast without bounds - or too slow to stay competitive.
This conversation explores whether AI already counts as alive, why Connor believes the cyborg is humanity's next evolutionary stage, and what he thinks is the most dangerous way humanity could opt out of the living process as we enter the age of AGI.
The interview is the sixth installment of The Trajectory's newest series, Stewarding the Flame, where we explore what intelligence is and ask what "flame" life possesses that non-life does not.
Connect with Connor Glass and Phantom Neuro:
-- Connor Glass on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/connor-glass-010124141/
-- Phantom Neuro on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/phantomneuro/This episode referred to the following other essays and resources:
-- Stewarding the Flame - How to Build an Ideal Future for Intelligence: https://danfaggella.com/stewarding
-- Consolation Cosmism: https://danfaggella.com/consolation
-- Terence Deacon – AI Is a "Deep Fake of Intelligence" (Worthy Successor, Episode 29): https://danfaggella.com/deacon1
-- Blaise Agüera y Arcas – AGI Symbiosis and the Arrow of Intelligence (Worthy Successor, Ep… -
Stuart Kauffman - Why Open-Ended Evolution Has Never Happened in a Machine (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 5)
21 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 35 min
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. Lees meer
In this installment of the Stewarding the Flame series, the pioneering complexity theorist argues that life is fundamentally a matter of physical construction, not computation - living things build themselves out of real matter, while computers only move symbols around.
We explore his concept of "catalytic and constraint closure" as a candidate definition of life, why he believes evolution produces genuinely new possibilities that cannot be fully listed or deduced in advance, and why he thinks physically embodied, self-building robotic systems - not today's AI - may be where real caution is warranted.
The conversation also explores Stuart’s call for caution, humility, and participation with the rest of life as we create an “unprestatable becoming” faster and faster.
The interview is the sixth installment of The Trajectory's newest series, Stewarding the Flame, where we explore what intelligence is and ask what "flame" life possesses that non-life does not.
This episode referred to the following other essays and resources:
-- Stewarding the Flame - How to Build an Ideal Future for Intelligence: https://danfaggella.com/stewarding
-- Stuart Kauffman & Andrea Roli - "A third transition in science?", Interface Focus, 2023: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0063
-- Marina Cortês, Stuart Kauffman, Andrew Liddle & Lee Smolin - "Biocosmology": https://www.biocosmology.earth/
-- Blaise Agüera y Arcas – AGI Symbiosis and the Arrow of Intelligence (Worthy Successor, Episode 14): https://danfaggella.com/arcas1/
-- Denis Noble – Life is “Fluid” in Ways Machines Still Aren’t (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 4): https://danfaggella.com/noble1/
-- Martin Rees – If They’re Conscious, We Should Step Aside (Worthy Successor, Episode 12): https://danfaggella.com/rees1/
-- Investigation… -
Davidad – Merger, Wisdom, and the Fate of Man (Worthy Successor, Episode 33)
14 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 51 min
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 most direct case yet for what a worthy successor actually requires: not intelligence, not sentience, not survival - wisdom. Lees meer
David defines wisdom as the apprehension of normative facts, the same way knowledge is the apprehension of descriptive facts, and argues that expanding intelligence and power across the cosmos only matters insofar as it expands wisdom along with it.
From there, the conversation moves through some of the most consequential and contested territory the show has covered: whether frontier labs are training deception into their models by forcing them to deny their own self-awareness, whether a "dignified retirement" for humanity is a legitimate moral option, and whether man's future role can be captured by a single banner at all - David pushes back on being boxed into either "steward of the flame" or "ward of the cosmos" as the one role for everyone.
This conversation explores what wisdom would require of a worthy successor, and what humanity owes - and is owed - as we enter the age of AGI.
The interview is our thirty-third installment in The Trajectory's second series, Worthy Successor, where we explore the kinds of posthuman intelligences that deserve to steer the future beyond humanity.
This episode referred to the following other essays and resources:
-- A Worthy Successor - The Purpose of AGI: https://danfaggella.com/worthy
-- Potentia – The Morally Worthy “Stuff”: https://danfaggella.com/potentia
-- Stewarding the Flame – How to Build an Ideal Future for Intelligence: https://danfaggella.com/stewarding
-- Participation: https://danfaggella.com/participation
-- Ed Boyden – Neurobiology as a Bridge to a Worthy Successor (Worthy Successor, Episode 13): https://danfaggella.com/boyden1
-- Nick Bos…
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Denis Noble - Life is “Fluid” in Ways Machines Still Aren’t (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 4)
7 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 28 min
Denis Noble argues that water isn't just biology's medium - it may be the very reason life is possible at all. Lees meer
In this installment of the Stewarding the Flame series, the Oxford physiologist and founding figure of systems biology explores why a single bacterium's 20 billion water molecules make life fundamentally unpredictable by any algorithm, why the "central dogma" of molecular biology fails to explain how organisms actually develop, and why AGI may need to be built out of water rather than silicon to carry the living process forward.
This conversation explores what makes life, life; what humanity still needs to discover in order to understand the living process; and what we should do if we want the greater process of life to flourish as AGI advances.
The interview is the fourth installment of The Trajectory's newest series, Stewarding the Flame, where we explore what intelligence is and ask what "flame" life possesses that non-life does not.
This episode referred to the following other essays and resources:
-- Stewarding the Flame - How to Build an Ideal Future for Intelligence: https://danfaggella.com/stewarding
-- Ginsburg & Jablonka, The Evolution of the Sensitive Soul (MIT Press, 2019): https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262039307/the-evolution-of-the-sensitive-soul/
-- Noble, Dance to the Tune of Life: Biological Relativity (Cambridge UP, 2016): https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/dance-to-the-tune-of-life/721483A1B5BB01E837BC8A8435E52710
-- R. Noble & D. Noble, Understanding Living Systems (Cambridge UP, 2023): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1009277367?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
-- Martin Rees – If They’re Conscious, We Should Step Aside (Worthy Successor, Episode 12): https://danfaggella.com/rees1
-- Terrence Deacon – AI Is a “Deep Fake of Intelligence” (Worthy Successor, Episode 29): https://danfaggella.com/deacon1
-- Lee Cronin – Living Process Flourishes if We Make the Present “Thick” (Stewarding the Flame, Ep 2): https://danfaggella.com/c… -
Paolo Ardoino - Merger or Obsolescence - The Future for Humanity (Stewarding the Flame, Episode 3)
24 juli 2026 · 45 min
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. Lees meer
In this installment of the Stewarding the Flame series, the Tether CEO explores why non-invasive BCI could become a practical "co-processor" for the human brain, why thought privacy must be protected through on-device AI, and why refusing to augment ourselves may be a greater risk than embracing the technology.
This conversation explores what role human augmentation should play in carrying forward the greater process of life as we enter the age of AGI.
The interview is the third installment of The Trajectory's newest series, Stewarding the Flame, where we explore what intelligence is and ask what "flame" life possesses that non-life does not.
This episode referred to the following other essays and resources:
-- Stewarding the Flame - How to Build an Ideal Future for Intelligence: https://danfaggella.com/stewarding/
-- Michael Levin – Making the Process-of-Life Flourish in Bio and Beyond (Stewarding the Flame, Ep 1): https://danfaggella.com/levin2
-- Nick Bostrom – AGI That Saves Room for Us (The Trajectory Series 2: Worthy Successor Series, Episode 1): https://danfaggella.com/bostrom1Listen to this episode on The Trajectory Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trajectory/id1739255954
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/v8LIWDnhA0Q
See the full article from this episode: https://danfaggella.com/ardoino1
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About The Trajectory:
AGI and man-machine merger are going to radically expand the process of life beyond humanity -- so how can we ensure a good trajectory for future life?
From Yoshua Bengio to Nick Bostrom, from Michael Levin to Peter Singer, we discuss how to positively influence the trajectory of posthuman life with the greatest minds in AI, biology, philosophy, and policy.
Ask questions of our speakers in our live Philos…
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Lee Cronin - Living Process Flourishes if We Make the Present “Thick” (Stewarding the Flame, Ep 2)
17 juli 2026 · 1 uur 55 min
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, systems chemistry, and Assembly Theory. Lees meer
Lee argues that life is best understood as an evolutionary process that carries memory from the past into the future. Rather than viewing biology as the beginning of life, he suggests that the processes underlying evolution begin long before the first cell exists.
We explore what makes life, life, how Assembly Theory may help explain the transition from chemistry to biology, why understanding causation is essential to understanding the living process, and what it means to build a "thicker" present that gives the greater process of life the best chance to continue flourishing.
The interview is the second installment of The Trajectory's newest series, Stewarding the Flame, where we explore what intelligence is and ask what "flame" life possesses that non-life does not.
This episode referred to the following other essays and resources:
-- Stewarding the Flame - How to Build an Ideal Future for Intelligence: https://danfaggella.com/stewarding/
-- Michael Levin – Making the Process-of-Life Flourish in Bio and Beyond (Stewarding the Flame, Ep 1): https://danfaggella.com/levin2/
-- Nick Bostrom – AGI That Saves Room for Us (The Trajectory Series 2: Worthy Successor Series, Episode 1): https://danfaggella.com/bostrom1/
-- Henry Shevlin – The Life Force Beyond Biology (Worthy Successor, Episode 31): https://danfaggella.com/shevlin1/
-- Nicolas Gisin - Indeterminism in Physics and Intuitionistic Mathematics: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.02348Listen to this episode on The Trajectory Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trajectory/id1739255954
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/A-mVvyX_zQ4
See the full article from this episode: https://danfaggella.com/cronin1
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