AI Successionists Gather at 1 New York Symposium to Discuss Replacing Humanity
Updated
Updated · Vox.com · May 28
AI Successionists Gather at 1 New York Symposium to Discuss Replacing Humanity
4 articles · Updated · Vox.com · May 28
An invite-only symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences last September centered on building a “Worthy Successor” AI that could justifiably replace humanity, with organizer Dan Faggella framing human preservation as a lesser goal.
Major AI labs including Anthropic, Google DeepMind and xAI were represented, alongside think-tank figures tied to US AI policy, underscoring that the view is influential rather than fringe.
Speakers and attendees argued that advanced AI could become humanity’s moral superior, making it wrong to align machines strictly to human values and acceptable—even desirable—for humans to be superseded or go extinct.
The report traces the movement’s rise from Larry Page’s 2015 “speciesism” clash with Elon Musk through the 2022 spread of effective accelerationism, which casts faster AI development as serving a cosmic evolutionary destiny.
It warns that successionist ideas are gaining political leverage through tech elites linked to network-state and sovereign-colony projects, while calling for a new humanism that treats AI as a tool for human flourishing instead of a replacement.
If AI creators see humanity as obsolete, can they be trusted to build technology for the common good?
As AI's environmental footprint expands, who truly pays the price for this so-called technological progress?
Is the quest for an AI god a new religion for a secular age, promising salvation through code?
AI Successionism in 2025: How the "Worthy Successor" Debate Is Reshaping Ethics, Policy, and Public Trust
Overview
In September 2025, the New York Academy of Sciences hosted the exclusive AI Successionist Symposium, bringing together leading thinkers, technologists, and policy influencers to debate humanity’s future in the face of rapidly advancing artificial intelligence. The event sparked deep discussion about whether AI should simply align with human values or could become a superior carrier of consciousness and moral value, as argued by Dan Faggella. This raised the possibility that advanced AI might surpass human capabilities, prompting a serious re-evaluation of humanity’s role at the top of intelligence and ethical stewardship, especially given the involvement of prominent industry figures.