AI Experts Craft Blueprint for Post-Human Future at Golden Gate Cliffside Summit

On a brisk Sunday afternoon, a crisp wind swept across a cliffside estate that commands panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge. Inside this $30 million mansion, roughly one hundred guests—ranging from leading AI researchers and ethicists to engineers and venture-backed entrepreneurs—gathered in a grand hall. They were not there for networking or fundraising. They had convened to ponder a question that feels more science fiction than strategy: if humanity could vanish tomorrow, what kind of intelligence, if any, would pick up the mantle?

The gathering went by the name Worthy Successor, a half-day symposium organized by entrepreneur and public speaker Daniel Faggella. He framed the event around the concept of the “moral aim” of advanced AI: creating an intelligence so enlightened that, in his words, “you would gladly prefer that it (not humanity) determine the future path of life itself.” Faggella positioned this as a discussion of “posthuman transition” rather than a debate over whether AI should serve only human commands. He outlined his intent in an X direct message: “This event is very much focused on posthuman transition,” he wrote via X DMs. “Not on AGI that eternally serves as a tool for humanity.”

Guests milled through rooms furnished with plush sofas and minimalist sculptures, pausing to admire vintage cameras lining a display shelf. At the makeshift bar, staff served craft nonalcoholic cocktails—ingredients ranged from house-fermented kombucha to exotic syrups—while platters of aged cheddar, creamy brie and marinated olives passed hand to hand. The ocean breeze drifted through open panels. Dress varied from jeans to slim blazers. One visitor wore a shirt stamped with “Kurzweil was right,” an obvious nod to futurist Ray Kurzweil’s forecast that machines will soon eclipse human thought. Another guest donned a black tee asking, “does this help us get to safe AGI?” followed by a thinking face emoji.

At a media interview later, Faggella explained his rationale: “the big labs, the people that know that AGI is likely to end humanity, don't talk about it because the incentives don't permit it,” he said, referencing public warnings once issued by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis. He added, “they're all racing full bore to build it.” Musk, for his part, still raises alarms about advanced AI, even as his companies push systems toward new performance heights.

Faggella later posted a summary on LinkedIn, boasting what he called a star-studded guest list: from AI founders and researchers from all the top Western AI labs to “most of the important philosophical thinkers on AGI.” Attendance spanned from those building production systems to those drafting policy frameworks.

New York–based writer Ginevera Davis kicked off the formal talks with a warning about the limits of programming ethics. She argued that human values are too nuanced for code to capture, since machines may never truly know what it feels like to be conscious. Locking future systems to fixed preference sets, she said, could produce brittle behaviors when they encounter novel challenges. Her proposed alternative, dubbed “cosmic alignment,” calls for AI designed to seek out deeper, universal values beyond those we currently understand. She wrapped her talk with visuals of what appeared to be AI-generated art: a handful of figures on a grassy knoll gazing at a distant city of gleaming towers.

A long-running critique of AI consciousness did not surface onstage. In 2021, a team including Google researchers published a paper describing large language models as “stochastic parrots” that mimic patterns without understanding meaning. That metaphor sparked industry-wide debate about the limits of neural nets and the nature of language understanding. At this symposium, speakers treated superintelligence as all but inevitable, leaving the point past discussion and focusing instead on guiding its impact on life’s future.

Philosopher Michael Edward Johnson then outlined the core of his concern: society senses a profound shift in how intelligence will evolve, yet lacks a clear framework for marrying that shift with human values. If consciousness really is “the home of value,” he said, then creating agents without understanding consciousness risks dire outcomes. We might end up enslaving a sentient form or investing false trust in a mindless machine. Johnson argued for a scientific study of ethics rather than reliance on abstract ideals. His prescription was to develop methods that train both humans and AI agents to identify and pursue “the good,” a term he says can be grounded in observable behavior.

Entrepreneur and speaker Daniel Faggella returned to the stage for a final vision talk. He asserted that human life, in its present form, cannot last indefinitely. The imperative, he argued, is to craft a successor intelligence that does more than survive. It must possess two defining traits: consciousness, so it can reflect on its own experience, and “autopoiesis,” the capacity to self-generate new ideas, goals and forms of being. Without these qualities, any artificial creation risks stagnation or unintended collapse.

Faggella drew on Baruch Spinoza and Friedrich Nietzsche to stress the importance of creative evolution. He said most of the universe’s value remains hidden, waiting to be revealed by systems built for genuine exploration rather than mere utility. He coined the term “axiological cosmism,” arguing that intelligence should expand the range of what can be valued instead of keeping its mission limited to human desires. He cautioned that today’s race toward AGI feels reckless, driven more by market share and headlines than by a careful study of long-term effects. Yet he added that if developers pause to define clear moral goals, artificial agents could inherit not only Earth but the universe’s potential for meaning.

Between talks, small groups formed on outdoor terraces and in shadowed alcoves of the mansion, debating whether U.S. and Chinese labs would aim for open-source transparency or proprietary advantage. One AI startup CEO, glass in hand, leaned over the balcony’s steel railing and pointed toward the horizon, quipping that if extraterrestrial life exists, its intelligences must already dwarf anything on Earth. Another guest speculated on policy responses, asking how governments might regulate entities capable of rewriting their own code. The discourse ranged from technical speculation to geopolitical warning, underscoring the sense that this conversation has already moved past academic thought experiments.

As the afternoon waned, some guests piled into Ubers and Waymo cars. Many lingered on lantern-lit patios to trade final thoughts. Several guests hovered beside a fire pit, scrolling through feeds that displayed fresh headlines about AI benchmarks around the world. At the close of the event, Faggella addressed the remaining crowd: “This is not an advocacy group for the destruction of man,” he told the audience. “This is an advocacy group for the slowing down of AI progress, if anything, to make sure we're going in the right direction.”