To safeguard Earth's biosphere, scientists have turned toward Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the hope that it may help to protect biodiversity. Yet this hope has been challenged by AI's appetite for water and energy rooted in AI's need for big data, iterative computations and algorithmic perfection. For example, during its learning phases, GPT-3 consumes energy at a scale approaching hundreds of megawatt-hours.
The foremost strategy to address this challenge involves optimizations targeting AI's data utilization, software, and hardware. Also, the fusion of in vitro neural networks with in silico computing could create "synthetic biological intelligence" and empower energy-efficient information processing. Synthetic gene networks could be used in computing, hinting at the prospect of efficient bio-artificial intelligence.
I consider another approach involving collaboration of the intelligence of technologies and the intelligence of bacteria also known as microbial intelligence. Bacteria can collectively learn and remember, solve problems, make decisions, communicate, adapt to changing environments, and preserve intelligent traits in their collective genomic memory. Their collective intelligence could help AI with safeguarding the planetary environment.
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