The Trajectory

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.

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 the “Successor” (Worthy Successor, Episode 15): https://danfaggella.com/carlsmith1
-- Michael Levin - Making the Process-of-Life Flourish in Bio and Beyond (Stewarding the Flame, Ep 1): https://danfaggella.com/levin2
-- Joscha Bach - Building an AGI to Play the Longest Games (Worthy Successor, Episode 6): https://danfaggella.com/bach1/
-- Michael Johnson - Symmetry, Beauty, and the Shape of Consciousness (Worthy Successor, Episode 17): https://danfaggella.com/johnson1/
-- The Great Mechanization Event - The Shift to Non-Biological Earth-Life: https://danfaggella.com/gme/
-- How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, by N. Katherine Hayles: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo3769963.html

Listen 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/NnOTUiAdk1E

See the full article from this episode: https://danfaggella.com/hayles1

...

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 Philosophy Circle calls:
https://bit.ly/PhilosophyCircle

Stay in touch:
-- Newsletter: bit.ly/TrajectoryTw
-- X: x.com/danfaggella
-- Blog: danfaggella.com/trajectory
-- YouTube: youtube.com/@trajectoryai

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.

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/undergirding

Listen to this episode on The Trajectory Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trajectory/id1739255954

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-iARM-hFMY

See the full article from this episode: https://danfaggella.com/pearce1

...

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 Philosophy Circle calls:
https://bit.ly/PhilosophyCircle

Stay in touch:
-- Newsletter: bit.ly/TrajectoryTw
-- X: x.com/danfaggella
-- Blog: danfaggella.com/trajectory
-- YouTube: youtube.com/@trajectoryai

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.

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): https://danfaggella.com/kauffman1
-- Manfred Eigen, "Selforganization of matter and the evolution of biological macromolecules" (1971): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1874/075007e0ed9d202b26fc85a24a44b4943f01.pdf
-- Müller, Steels & Szathmáry, "Evolvable AI: Threats of a new major transition in evolution," PNAS (2026): https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2527700123
-- Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene
-- Samuel Butler, "Darwin among the Machines" (1863): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_among_the_Machines
-- Arthur C. Clarke's 1964 interview predicting AGI: https://www.techradar.com/pro/we-should-regard-it-as-a-privilege-to-be-stepping-stones-to-higher-things-how-arthur-c-clarke-predicted-the-rise-of-agi-and-the-looming-demise-of-humanity-back-in-1964
-- John Smart's transcension hypothesis: https://accelerating.org/articles/transcensionhypothesis.html
-- Stenseth & Maynard Smith, "Coevolution in Ecosystems: Red Queen Evolution or Stasis?", Evolution (1984): https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1558-5646.1984.tb00358.x
-- Yoshua Bengio – Why We Shouldn't Blast Off to AGI Just Yet (The Trajectory Series 1: AGI Destinations, Episode 1): https://danfaggella.com/bengio1
-- Stuart Russell – Avoiding the Cliff of Uncontrollable AI (AGI Governance, Episode 9): https://danfaggella.com/russell1
-- Daniel Brooks, Eric Hoberg & Walter Boeger, The Stockholm Paradigm: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo38871306.html
Listen 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/s1Tm9L104fc

See the full article from this episode: https://danfaggella.com/szathmary1

…

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 Philosophy Circle calls:
https://bit.ly/PhilosophyCircle

Stay in touch:
-- Newsletter: bit.ly/TrajectoryTw
-- X: x.com/danfaggella
-- Blog: danfaggella.com/trajectory
-- YouTube: youtube.com/@trajectoryai

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.

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, Episode 14): https://danfaggella.com/arcas1
-- Ed Boyden – Neurobiology as a Bridge to a Worthy Successor (Worthy Successor, Episode 13): https://danfaggella.com/boyden1
-- Martin Rees – If They're Conscious, We Should Step Aside (Worthy Successor, Episode 12): https://danfaggella.com/rees1
-- Richard Sutton – Humanity Never Had Control in the First Place (Worthy Successor, Episode 2): https://danfaggella.com/sutton1
-- Lotus Eaters vs World Eaters – A Fork in the Road in the Transhuman Transition : https://danfaggella.com/the-transhuman-transition-lotus-eaters-vs-world-eaters/
-- The Culture Series: Iain M. Banks: https://www.goodreads.com/series/49118-culture
-- Accelerando: Charles Stross: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/17863.Accelerando
-- On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura): A poem by Lucretius: https://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.3.iii.html

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/rJSK8o1HaS0

See the full article from this episode: https://danfaggella.com/glass1

…

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 Philosophy Circle calls:
https://bit.ly/PhilosophyCircle

Stay in touch:
-- Newsletter: bit.ly/TrajectoryTw
-- X: x.com/danfaggella
-- Blog: danfaggella.com/trajectory
-- YouTube: youtube.com/@trajectoryai

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 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/
-- Investigations, by Stuart Kauffman: https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Investigations.html?id=HLkX-6m4W8kC&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y
-- Novacene, The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence, By James Lovelock: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262539517/novacene/

Listen 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/PQWcIHd2MzM
See the full article from this episode: https://danfaggella.com/kauffman1
...
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 Philosophy Circle calls:
 https://bit.ly/PhilosophyCircle
Stay in touch:
 -- Newsletter: bit.ly/TrajectoryTw
-- X: x.com/danfaggella
-- Blog: danfaggella.com/trajectory
-- YouTube: youtube.com/@trajectoryai