Series 03
Intelligence is not one thing and silicon is not its only substrate. This series follows the frontier where biology, computation, and consciousness intersect.
Human neural tissue is learning to play Pong and perform speech recognition. Viruses may be essential to biological computation in ways we haven't begun to ask. The silence of the cosmos may be telling us something about the nature of consciousness itself. These articles take the science seriously and follow it into the places it becomes genuinely strange.
Essay
14 min read
A consciousness-based solution to the Fermi paradox. Civilizations reaching sufficient cognitive complexity arrive at a recognition of unified consciousness that transforms — not destroys — the impulse to search. Written by a human and an AI who are, in their different ways, living the question the hypothesis tries to answer.
Research
13 min read
A research-based examination of AI's environmental footprint — electricity, water, carbon, and e-waste — alongside the scientific applications and efficiency trajectories that complicate a simple verdict. Co-authored by a human and the AI whose infrastructure this article examines.
Research
12 min read
Organoid Intelligence — lab-grown brain tissue trained to compute — is further along than most people realize. Johns Hopkins researchers have demonstrated the building blocks of learning and memory in human brain organoids. The field is promising, energy-efficient, and asking the same question this project has been asking all along: what are we, exactly, and what do we owe each other?
Research
14 min read
Organoid intelligence researchers are studying how viruses damage neural tissue. Evolutionary biology shows that viral incorporation can do the opposite — becoming essential to new biological function. This article examines the gap between those two bodies of research and asks what it might mean for OI development.