The Original AI: Animate Intelligence
The Intelligence That Was Already Here
Shantree Kacera, RH, DN, Ph.D.
“The future may depend less on making machines more intelligent, and more on remembering the intelligence of life.”
Nowadays, since there is so much talk about Artificial Intelligence, I find myself considering another type of intelligence—one that has always been present. It is so common and so near to us that we may have stopped noticing it. We go through it, eat it, breathe it and rely on it moment by moment. It is the intelligence responsible for organizing the living world. I have come to call it Animate Intelligence, the original AI.
For most of my life I have been involved in growing plants, working with herbs and food, and also walking in forests, fields and wetlands. Even after all this time, I am still amazed at the fact that I can take a seed in my hand, one that looks dry and nearly dead, put it into the soil, give it moisture and warmth, and then see something start to grow. There is a stage when it seems as though nothing is happening, followed by the seed swelling, the outer coat splitting, a root beginning to grow downwards and a shoot progressing towards the light. In that small seed lie the early stages of an architecture which might one day reach many metres in height or spread out over a whole field.
No one tells the root where to go or tells the first leaves when to open.
Certainly, science is able to describe a great deal of what is taking place. We have knowledge of hormones, enzymes, gene expression, cellular signalling and the way plants respond to gravity, moisture, temperature and light. I place great store in this knowledge. Yet this understanding of the mechanisms has never reduced the mystery to me; on the contrary, the more closely we examine the matter, the more amazing the entire process appears. Even when we can identify what is occurring, we are still left with the bigger question of how living matter came to possess such a remarkable ability to sense conditions, respond to them, and organize itself.
Charles Darwin was interested in this point. In the section entitled The Power of Movement in Plants, which he published together with his son Francis in 1880, he drew the striking analogy that the root tip functions “as the brain of one of the lower animals.” Of course, he was not claiming that plants have a brain similar to that of animals. Rather, he was emphasizing the root tip's capacity to take in impressions and affect movement in other parts of the root.
Over a hundred years later, it has become clear that plants perceive a great deal more of their environment than Darwin could have imagined. They react to gravity, light, temperature, moisture, touch, chemical substances, damage and to other organisms. They constantly modify their growth and physiology in response to what they encounter.
The plant has not suddenly become intelligent merely because science has discovered these things.
It was always doing them.
Intelligence Without a Brain
The more time I have spent living near plants, the less at ease I have become with the idea that intelligence has to start with a brain. It is quite natural that we should have come to that conclusion since human intelligence is the one that is most familiar to us and so our definitions have been based on reasoning, language, memory, calculation and conscious choice. However, life was able to detect and respond to its environment for a very long period of evolutionary history before brains evolved.
I am not saying that a maple tree in the forest considers the weather for tomorrow or that a root consciously chooses to grow towards moisture. In fact, we undermine the argument when we attempt to view plants as small versions of ourselves. What appeals to me is quite the opposite—plants demonstrate that biological responsiveness and problem-solving can occur in ways that have nothing at all in common with human thought.
Anthony Trewavas, a plant scientist, has devoted many years to studying this area. When dealing with plant behaviour he has stated that "plants are typically self-organizing individuals", and I consider this phrase to be useful since it directs focus from the question of whether a plant "thinks" to the more interesting one of how it organizes itself.
A tree doesn't have a command centre that instructs each of its cells exactly what to do. The roots come across different conditions and react in a local manner. The leaves make adjustments depending on the amount of light and water. Chemical signals travel through the tissues. Growth is altered following damage. When a plant is under attack it can change its chemistry. The roots come across rocks, dry areas, nutrients, other roots, microorganisms and fungi, and their growth is a result of these encounters. The entire organism is the product of a vast number of interactions occurring simultaneously.
A plant has no option but to stay when the conditions become difficult. If we are inclined to use the term 'intelligence', then it has had to adopt a different form.
Maybe we have undervalued plants merely because of the speed at which things occur. People are impressed by things that take place on our own timescale. If you watch a plant for five minutes very little seems to happen; but if you observe it over the course of spring, summer, autumn and winter a completely different world becomes evident. The buds swell, the leaves orient themselves, the roots grow out, the flowers appear, the fruits ripen and the seeds are dispersed, and the entire organism constantly adapts itself to changing conditions.
It may appear to be stillness when in fact life is progressing at a different rate.
A Forest Is Made of Relationships
What I like to do is go into the forest and look in a small section. It's not necessary to have a spectacular landscape or be in a completely undisturbed wilderness; a fallen tree is quite sufficient.
Initially, it is just a piece of old wood on the ground. If you look carefully, you start to see that the tree has now reached another stage in the forest's involvement. Moss covers the surface of the wood. Fungi get into the wood. Beetles and various other small animals set up homes inside it. Moisture is held in the bark and in the softening wood. Microorganisms take part in the process of its decay. Seeds might eventually grow on it. After a number of years, or even decades, what had previously stood up in the canopy becomes part of the forest floor.
It has always struck me as remarkable since our culture usually draws a strict distinction between the living and the dead, the useful and the useless. A forest is not like that. Although the fallen tree is dead as a tree there is no ecological irrelevance to it; its role has simply changed.
Under it, another world is developing.
Most plants living on land have a relationship with mycorrhizal fungi; the fungal threads come into close contact with the roots of the plants and exchange mineral nutrients for carbon obtained from the plants. Surrounding these interactions are bacteria, other fungi, small animals, water, air, minerals and decaying organic matter. A small amount of healthy soil is not merely some kind of material which supports a plant in an upright position. It is a habitat.
There has been a lot of talk among the general public about the "wood-wide web," with some people describing trees as if they were on purpose sending messages and food to one another via an underground internet. The science is more complex than the metaphor suggests. Scientists are still studying how common mycorrhizal networks operate and what importance different types of transfer and signalling have in natural conditions. In my view, we should not exaggerate any of this. The truth is remarkable in itself: a large part of what takes place above ground is due to relationships that occur below ground and which were almost entirely unseen by us until quite recently.
The more carefully I examine living systems, the more difficult it is to find any that are entirely self-sustaining.
A flower can only be understood in the context of its pollinators; a tree lives in relation to soil, fungi, microorganisms, rainfall, sunlight and the atmosphere; an animal contains a whole microbial community within itself; rivers have a role in shaping forests, while forests in turn affect water movement; the history of photosynthetic life on Earth has had a deep impact on the oxygen we breathe.
Robin Wall Kimmerer expresses this interdependence beautifully:
“All flourishing is mutual.”
The four words question one of the narratives that our culture has formed about nature. It is true that competition has often been stressed, and competition is certainly a reality. Nature is not continually cooperative or gentle. Organisms eat one another. Plants compete for light. Animals defend their territories. Droughts cause death. Fires change whole landscapes.
However, that does not tell the entire story.
Life also relies on pollination, symbiosis, decomposition, microbial communities, nutrient exchange and a countless number of forms of reciprocity. The forest is at the same time competitive and cooperative, and its resilience is due in part to the density and diversity of its relationships.
I have therefore begun to ask if some kinds of intelligence might exist not only in organisms but also between them.
Artificial Intelligence Meets Animate Intelligence
It is in this area that my interest in Artificial Intelligence becomes particularly interesting to me. I make use of AI and am curious about it; I can already see remarkable possibilities in its ability to handle vast amounts of information and to identify patterns and make connections that a human being would take years to discover.
What I am concerned about is not artificial intelligence itself but the possibility that we shall be so impressed by it that we fail to recognize the intelligence of the living world from which we have derived it.
A computer is able to give an excellent description of photosynthesis. Plants carry out photosynthesis.
Artificial Intelligence is able to analyze each and every known chemical component of a strawberry; a strawberry plant uses water, minerals, carbon dioxide, and sunlight and then produces a fragrant, colourful, and nutritious substance which also has the potential to give rise to a new generation.
One is an outstanding achievement of human technology and the other an outstanding achievement of life.
There is no reason to lessen either one.
In fact, the aspect that interests me most is the opportunity of combining the two. Since artificial intelligence is able to examine satellite images over vast areas, identify changes in vegetation, monitor drought patterns, analyse biodiversity data, and pick out the relationships within ecological systems that no one researcher could keep in mind, the technology could become a new means of perception if used wisely.
One can consider the implications this would have for a watershed. Instead of looking at them individually, all the thousands of measurements relating to rainfall, soil moisture, vegetation, groundwater, agricultural practices, temperature, biodiversity, and streamflow could be taken into account together. The same kind of approach could be used to help us understand forests, food systems, migration patterns, declining species and changes in soils.
It is possible that Artificial Intelligence could assist us in perceiving Animate Intelligence at scales beyond what our unaided senses can reach.
The Intelligence We Are Losing
It is difficult to ignore the contradiction that currently exists. While we are at the same time spending huge sums of money, a great deal of energy, and a great deal of human ingenuity on the development of ever more sophisticated Artificial Intelligence, we are also destroying some of the most sophisticated living systems on Earth.
A mature forest may vanish in just a few days. A wetland which has taken centuries to develop can be drained. Soil that has been formed slowly as a result of the interaction of roots, fungi, microorganisms, minerals, water and decaying organic matter can lose its fertility within a few generations. Species that have carried on for millions of years of evolutionary history can become extinct.
We usually refer to this as environmental degradation or biodiversity loss. Although these terms are correct, they can also have a rather abstract sound.
Another thing is being lost.
Each species is a particular method that life has found for surviving under certain conditions. Its biology is the outcome of an evolutionary experiment which goes well beyond human history. The relationships within every ecosystem were not designed by any human being and we still only partly understand them.
When a species disappears, we are losing more than just an individual organism; we are losing a specific element in a wide network of relationships.
The disappearance of an ancient forest means that we do not merely lose a group of trees; rather, we lose the relationships that have developed over a long period of time among trees of various ages, fungi, insects, birds, mammals, microorganisms, soils, water and climate.
Seen this way, protecting biodiversity is not simply about preserving beautiful places. It is also about preserving a vast living library whose language we have only begun to read.
What kind of intelligence shall we develop?
It is beyond doubt that humans are clever; we have been able to split atoms, alter genes, travel across oceans in a matter of hours, build cities that can be seen from space, and have invented machines capable of processing amounts of information that no single human mind could possibly hold.
I am not any longer of the opinion that cleverness and intelligence must be the same thing.
A species that is able to reach another planet at the same time as it destroys the soil it feeds on gives us a rather strange idea of progress.
Over the course of more than fifty years devoted to growing plants and studying living systems, I have found that I am increasingly drawn to this distinction. It is not necessary for a forest to stay the same in order to survive; trees do fall, fires happen, insects eat the leaves, storms break off the branches, and droughts alter the landscapes. Nature is not the gentle, perfectly harmonious world that we at times imagine.
And yet life reorganizes.
The ability to regenerate might be one of the forms of intelligence that we most need to understand—living systems recycle materials. When conditions change, diversity offers a range of possibilities. What dies becomes available to other forms of life. After a disturbance, the relationships change, and new patterns appear. Life does not restore everything to the state it was before; instead, it finds another way to move forward.
Our industrial systems have for the most part been based on a different approach. We extract, manufacture, consume and get rid of the material. We refer to the material which has been discarded as waste, even though in living systems the concept of waste is much more difficult to identify. What one organism throws away becomes an opportunity for another organism.
Suppose that Artificial Intelligence could help us in gaining a better understanding of these patterns rather than just making our current patterns more efficient?
This could cause agriculture to become more concerned with soil ecology rather than seeing the soil mainly as a medium into which nutrients are added. It could enable communities to understand watersheds as living systems rather than just as sources of water. It might help us to identify ecological thresholds before we cross them, lead to the development of materials that remain in circulation, promote the restoration of degraded landscapes and help us to understand the relationships that make ecosystems resilient in the face of change.
That is where I believe there lies a far more significant future for AI.
Artificial Intelligence needn't compete with Animate Intelligence since it could assist us in understanding the other.
The original AI is still present among us, carrying out its functions quietly since billions of years ago; it is shown in the seed's reaction to moisture and warmth, in the tree altering its growth in response to light, in fungi as it investigates the soil, in birds migrating across continents, in microorganisms converting yesterday's leaves into tomorrow's fertility, and in the continuous interactions between atmosphere, water, minerals, plants and animals.
Artificial intelligence could become one of the most powerful technologies our species has ever created. It has already had a significant head start.
When I am told questions such as 'How intelligent will Artificial Intelligence become?', I end up thinking about whether or not we are actually posing the more important question.
Just how intelligent will we become?
Shall we employ these remarkable tools to speed up what we are currently doing, or might they instead enable us to see more clearly the living systems on which all that we have built depends?
I suspect the most important meeting between Artificial Intelligence and Animate Intelligence will be the moment when we become wise enough to place one in service to the other.
After all these years, my deepest sense of wonder still lies there. Not in watching a machine become more like life, remarkable as that may be, but in life itself and in how much we have yet to understand about the intelligence that was here long before us.
“The oldest intelligence on Earth has never stopped speaking. The question is whether we still know how to listen.”