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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

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 Chemical weapons were narrow, outdated, and ultimately unwanted.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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93:06

Jeremie and Edouard Harris - The Chinese Dragon Is...

The Trajectory ·

2025/08/29

This is an interview with Jeremie and Edouard Harris, Co-founders of Gladstone AI, and leading researchers on the implications of AGI for the US government / DoD. In this episode, Jeremie and Edouard explain why trusting China on AGI is dangerous, highlight ongoing espionage in Western labs, explore verification tools like tamper-proof chips, and argue that slowing China’s AI progress may be vital for safe alignment. This is the second installment of our "US-China AGI Relations" series - wh...

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79:27

Ed Boyden - Neurobiology as a Bridge to a Worthy...

The Trajectory ·

2025/08/22

This new installment of the Worthy Successor series features Ed Boyden, an American neuroscientist and entrepreneur at MIT, widely known for his work on optogenetics and brain simulation - his breakthroughs have helped shape the frontier of neurotechnology. In this episode, we explore Ed’s vision for what kinds of posthuman intelligences deserve to inherit the future. His deep commitment to “ground truth” - the idea that intelligence must be built from and validated against reality, not just...

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88:56

Roman Yampolskiy - The Blacker the Box, the Bigger...

The Trajectory ·

2025/08/15

This is an interview with Roman V. Yampolskiy, a computer scientist at the University of Louisville and a leading voice in AI safety. Everyone has heard Roman's p(doom) arguments, that isn't the focus of our interview. We instead talk about Roman's "untestability" hypothesis, and the fact that there maybe untold, human-incomprehensible powers already in current LLMs. He discusses how such powers might emerge, and when and how a "treacherous turn" might happen. This is the Third episod...

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84:49

Toby Ord - Crucial Updates on the Evolving AGI Risk...

The Trajectory ·

2025/08/12

Joining us in our seventh episode of our series AGI Governance on The Trajectory is Toby Ord, Senior Researcher at Oxford University’s AI Governance Initiative and author of The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity. Toby is one of the world’s most influential thinkers on long-term risk - and one of the clearest voices on how advanced AI could shape, or shatter, the trajectory of human civilization. In this episode, Toby unpacks the evolving technical and economic landscap...

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77:06

Martin Rees - If They’re Conscious, We Should Step...

The Trajectory ·

2025/08/01

This new installment of the Worthy Successor series is an interview with the brilliant Martin Rees - British cosmologist, astrophysicist, and 60th President of the Royal Society. In this interview we explore his belief that humanity is just a stepping stone between Darwinian life and a new form of intelligent design - not divinely ordained, but constructed by artificial minds building successors of their own. For Martin, the true tragedy would not be losing our species, but squandering the ...

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90:42

Emmett Shear - AGI as "Another Kind of Cell" in the...

The Trajectory ·

2025/07/18

This is an interview with Emmett Shear - CEO of SoftMax, co-founder of Twitch, former interim CEO of OpenAI, and one of the few public-facing tech leaders who seems to take both AGI development and AGI alignment seriously. In this episode, we explore Emmett’s vision of AGI as a kind of living system, not unlike a new kind of cell, joining the tissue of intelligent life. We talk through the limits of our moral vocabulary, the obligations we might owe to future digital minds, and the uncomfort...

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111:37

Joshua Clymer - Where Human Civilization Might...

The Trajectory ·

2025/07/04

This is an interview with Joshua Clymer, AI safety researcher at Redwood Research, and former researcher at METR. Joshua has spent years focused on institutional readiness for AGI, especially the kinds of governance bottlenecks that could become breaking points. His thinking is less about far-off futures and more about near-term institutional failure modes - the brittle places that might shatter first. In this episode, Joshua and I discuss where AGI pressure might rupture our systems: intel...

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85:55

Peter Singer - Optimizing the Future for Joy, and the...

The Trajectory ·

2025/06/20

This is an interview with Peter Singer, one of the most influential moral philosophers of our time. Singer is best known for his groundbreaking work on animal rights, global poverty, and utilitarian ethics, and his ideas have shaped countless conversations about the moral obligations of individuals, governments, and societies. This interview is our tenth installment in The Trajectory’s second series Worthy Successor, where we explore the kinds of posthuman intelligences that deserve to ...

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115:59

David Duvenaud - What are Humans Even Good For in...

The Trajectory ·

2025/06/06

This is an interview with David Duvenaud, Assistant Professor at University of Toronto, co-author of the Gradual Disempowerment paper, and former researcher at Anthropic. This is the first episode in our new “Early Experience of AGI” series - where we explore the early impacts of AGI on our work and personal lives. This episode referred to the following other essays and resources: -- Closing the Human Reward Circuit: https://danfaggella.com/reward -- Gradual Disempowerment: http://www.gradu...

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107:40

Kristian Rönn - A Blissful Successor Beyond Darwinian...

The Trajectory ·

2025/05/23

This is an interview with Kristian Rönn, author, successful startup founder, and now CEO of Lucid, and AI hardware governance startup based in SF. This is an additional installment of our "Worthy Successor" series - 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 -- Kristian's "Darwinian Trap" bo...

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101:56

Jack Shanahan - Avoiding an AI Race While Keeping...

The Trajectory ·

2025/05/09

This is an interview with Jack Shanahan, a three-star General and former Director of the Joint AI Center (JAIC) within the US Department of Defense. This the first installment of our "US-China AGI Relations" series - where we explore pathways to achieving international AGI cooperation while avoiding conflicts and arms races. This episode referred to the following other essays and resources: -- The International Governance of AI – We Unite or We Fight: https://emerj.com/inter...

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106:15

Richard Ngo - A State-Space of Positive Posthuman...

The Trajectory ·

2025/04/25

This is an interview with Richard Ngo, AGI researcher and thinker - with extensive stints at both OpenAI and DeepMind. This is an additional installment of our "Worthy Successor" series - 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 -- Richard's exploratory fiction writing - http://narrativear...

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41 results

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