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PODCAST

The Trajectory

Daniel Faggella

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.

technology

All Episodes

104:45

Ben Goertzel - The Primordial Soup of AGI Minds...

The Trajectory ·

2026/03/20

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 architectures, decentralized systems, and philosophical perspectives on intelligence. We talk about how early exposure to science fiction, philosophy, and psychedelics shaped Ben’s cosmic orientation toward intelligence. We examine his vision for a decentralize...

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116:17

Luciano Floridi - How Life Could Flourish in the...

The Trajectory ·

2026/03/13

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 philosophers studying the ethical and civilizational implications of digital technology. In this conversation, we explore Luciano’s philosophy of the infosphere and the ethical framework he calls informational ethics. We examine how new forms of agency ar...

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133:49

Weaver Weinbaum - Designing Intelligence for Freedom...

The Trajectory ·

2026/03/06

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, we explore Weaver’s idea that intelligence should not merely optimize for predefined goals. Instead, intelligence should expand the space of possible goals and values. This perspective sits at the center of his concept of open-ended intelligence. The intervi...

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106:49

Francis Heylighen - The Self-Organizing Universe...

The Trajectory ·

2026/02/27

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 on evolution, complexity, and what he calls the "self-organizing universe." Francis's work applies evolutionary thinking beyond biology. He treats evolution as a general framework for understanding how complex systems survive and adapt - from atoms an...

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142:42

Stephen Wolfram - In a Sea of Complexity, Does a...

The Trajectory ·

2026/02/13

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 intelligence not as a privileged human trait, but as one expression of a vast computational universe. From weather systems to geological processes, he argues that nature itself may be computing in ways just as sophisticated as the human mind. We explore his provoca...

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226:34

John Smart - Evolution from Cells to...

The Trajectory ·

2026/01/30

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 intelligence. In this episode, we go deep on John’s view that intelligence does not evolve randomly, but instead progresses through constrained developmental stages - from chemistry to biology to nervous systems to digital cognition. He frames AGI as a...

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94:20

Susan Schneider - Intelligence Is Everywhere,...

The Trajectory ·

2026/01/23

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. In this episode, we explore why “life” and “consciousness” shouldn’t be treated as the same thing, why fluent chatbots can convincingly perform the concept of consciousness without being conscious, and what a “global brain” future might mean for sentie...

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99:54

Brian Thomas Swimme - Life Is Bigger Than Humanity...

The Trajectory ·

2026/01/09

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 from a destabilizing claim: that humanity is not the center of value, but an expression of a much larger creative process. Rather than asking how humans can remain permanently relevant, he asks how we might participate wisely in a universe defined by continual...

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122:07

David Sloan Wilson - Darwinian Forces Shape the Earth...

The Trajectory ·

2025/12/26

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 of the Evolution Institute and ProSocial World. In this conversation, we explore what it would mean for humanity to act as a steward of evolution itself - not freezing life in its current form, but guiding its transformation toward futures that re...

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123:39

Michael Johnson - Symmetry, Beauty, and the Shape of...

The Trajectory ·

2025/12/12

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 formalist approach to consciousness research and his work on the Symmetry Theory of Valence at the Qualia Research Institute. In this episode, we explore Mike's radical vision of what posthuman sentience could become - and why he believes human experience represen...

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121:18

Robin Hanson - A Successor Must be Adaptive (Worthy...

The Trajectory ·

2025/11/28

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 approaches the future of intelligence through the lens of deep evolutionary dynamics, cultural drift, and long-term civilizational viability. In this episode, we dig into Robin’s stark warning that humanity is losing the adaptive capacities that once made civ...

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112:41

Joe Carlsmith - A Wiser, AI-Powered Civilization is...

The Trajectory ·

2025/11/14

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, Joe joins us in his personal capacity, not representing any brand or company, and offering his own thoughtful perspectives. In this episode, we explore Joe’s reflections on what a “worthy successor” might really mean - not as a single entity, but as a c...

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83:58

Blaise Agüera y Arcas - AGI Symbiosis and the Arrow...

The Trajectory ·

2025/10/31

This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Vice President and Fellow at Google, and CTO of Technology & Society. In this conversation, Blaise talks about how life and intelligence seem to move in a single direction - toward greater complexity and deeper interdependence. Blaise describes this movement as an arrow of evolution, shaped by cooperation and merging - from the earliest partnerships between simple organisms to the way human ...

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64:25

Brad Carson - AGI Competition with Civility and...

The Trajectory ·

2025/10/24

This is an interview with Brad Carson, who served as a U.S. Congressman and as Acting Under Secretary of the Army, and now serves as President of Americans for Responsible Innovation (ARI). You might expect someone with deep roots in national security to see AGI through a purely competitive lens - a technological arms race to be won at any cost. Instead, Brad’s focus is on responsibility, understanding, and restraint: how to sustain moral clarity in a domain where the stakes will rival thos...

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52:52

Irakli Beridze - Can the UN Help with Global AGI...

The Trajectory ·

2025/10/10

Joining us in our eleventh episode of our series AGI Governance on The Trajectory is Irakli Beridze, Director of the UNICRI Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics under the United Nations mandate. In this conversation, Irakli draws a stark contrast between yesterday’s arms-control templates and tomorrow’s AI. Chemical weapons were narrow, outdated, and ultimately unwanted. By contrast, advanced AI is general-purpose, fast-accelerating, and universally desirable - which makes govern...

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37:01

Dean Xue Lan - A Multi-Pronged Approach to Pre-AGI...

The Trajectory ·

2025/10/03

Joining us in our tenth episode of our AGI Governance series on The Trajectory is Dean Xue Lan, longtime scholar of public policy and global governance, whose recent work centers on AI safety and international coordination. In this episode, Xue stresses that AGI governance must evolve as an adaptive network. The UN can set frameworks among nations, but companies, safety institutes, and industry associations also play critical roles. Only through combining these overlapping layers can governa...

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69:41

RAND’s Joel Predd - Competitive and Cooperative...

The Trajectory ·

2025/09/26

This is an interview with Joel Predd, a senior engineer at the RAND Corporation and co-author of RAND’s work on “five hard national security problems from AGI,”. In this conversation, Joel lays out a sober frame for leaders: treat AGI as technically credible but deeply uncertain; assume it will be transformational if it arrives; and recognize that the pace of progress is outstripping our capacity for governance. This is the fourth installment of our "US-China AGI Relations" series - where ...

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51:15

Drew Cukor - AI Adoption as a National Security...

The Trajectory ·

2025/09/19

USMC Colonel Drew Cukor spent 25 years as decades in uniform and helped spearhead early Department of Defense AI efforts, eventually leading project including the Pentagon’s Project Maven. After government service, he’s led AI initiatives in the private sector, first with JP Morgan and now with TWG Global. Drew argues that when it comes to the US-China AGI race, the decisive lever isn’t what we block – it’s what we adopt. The nation that most completely fuses people and machines across daily...

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64:32

Stuart Russell - Avoiding the Cliff of Uncontrollable...

The Trajectory ·

2025/09/12

Joining us in our ninth episode of our AGI Governance series on The Trajectory is Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley and author of Human Compatible. In this episode, Stuart explores why current AI race dynamics resemble a prisoner’s dilemma, why governments must establish enforceable red lines, and how international coordination might begin with consensus principles before tackling more difficult challenges. This episode referred to the following other resources:...

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36:45

Craig Mundie - Co-Evolution with AI: Industry First,...

The Trajectory ·

2025/09/05

Joining us in our eighth episode of our AGI Governance series on The Trajectory is Craig Mundie, former Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft and longtime advisor on the evolution of digital infrastructure, AI, and national security. In this episode, Craig and I explore how bottom-up governance could emerge from commercial pressures and cross-national enterprise collaboration, and how this pragmatic foundation might lead us into a future of symbiotic co-evolution rather than cata...

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53 results

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