Henry Shevlin – The Life Force Beyond Biology (Worthy Successor, Episode 31)

[digital music] This is Daniel Fageli. You're tuned in to The Trajectory, and this is the 31st episode in our Worthy Successor series, where we ask about the kinds of intelligence that we would hope would bloom beyond humanity when one day maybe we're no longer here. Our guest this week is the remarkably cosmic and delightfully British Henry Shevlin. Uh, Henry was, uh, the associate director at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence. He was also teaching at Cambridge, uh, at the time of this episode. This, this was recorded before his job at Google DeepMind, so bear that in mind as you listen to this episode. Henry brings up a number of interesting points. My reflections, as usual, will be saved for the end of the episode. He talks about bringing back animism, understanding the power of life. What is that life force that is so valuable in biology that it allows it to, uh, bubble up new forms, new powers, on its own out in nature without humans tinkering with it, and similarly is capable of being sentient, uh, something that Henry does not think necessarily has to be relegated to wetware, uh, for the end of time. But he thinks these things obviously have grand moral implications, and he describes us potentially as a- potentially what would be a thin boundary layer between complex biological life and non-biological life. He goes way more into what he means by that in the actual episode, and there's so much to unpack. I should mention, as we pivot into the episode, Henry is a philosopher and, uh, once or twice a month, we have something we call the Philosophy Circle. So those of you that tune in here on The Trajectory or tune in on the newsletter, um, sometimes we have sessions online with 20 or 30 people from literally around the world, from Shenzhen, China to London, England to the Bay Area and beyond. People in big tech, people in academia, people in neuro, uh, people at the cutting edge of AI or, uh, robotic perception, and all sorts of interesting fields discussing the greater process of life. What does it look like to move towards a positive trajectory for the unraveling forces of life that seem to be moving much faster than biology? Um, and, and what are the pathways we might want to avoid? So many of the speakers you've seen here on the Worthy Successor series have been speakers in our Philosophy Circle sessions, but we get to break out in intimate groups where people... You know, you might be paired up with somebody who runs a neurotech startup. You might be paired up with somebody who works at big tech. You might be paired up with somebody that teaches at Carnegie Mellon University. Uh, and everybody's sharing perspectives on where this technology should go. We think this conversation should be more interactive. The Philosophy Circle is where you can do that. There will be a link here at the bottom of the screen in addition to, uh, a link down in the description of this particular episode. Make sure to check that out. Fill that out if you're interested in joining people like Henry, uh, for, uh, private Philosophy Circle sessions that we run once or twice a month. Without further ado, let's fly into the episode with Henry