Conventionally, intelligence is seen as a property of individuals. However, it is also known to be a property of collectives. Examples include collective-decision-making by social insects, slime mould navigating mazes, and even intelligent behavior of individual cells and viruses which are themselves a collective of chemical processes. Humans are also intelligent, and our intelligence primarily derives from our social behavior which is currently global in its reach. These examples serve to highlight the fact that intelligence, broadly construed, operates across diverse length and time scales. In a new paper in the International Journal of Astrobiology, researchers from the University of Rochester, the Planetary Science Institute, Arizona State University, and Santa Fe Institute broaden the idea of intelligence as a collective property and extend it to the planetary scale.
Four possible domains of planetary intelligence: (a) on a planet with an immature biosphere (such as the Earth during the Archean Eon) there are insufficient feedback loops between life and geophysical coupled systems to exert strong co-evolution; (b) on a planet with a mature biosphere (such as Earth after the Proterozoic) the biosphere exerts strong forcing on the geophysical state establishing full co-evolution of the entire system; this feedback may provide some degree of long-term stabilizing (i.e. Gaian) modulations for the full system; (c) on a planet with an immature technosphere (represented by the current Anthropocene Earth) feedbacks from technological activity produce strong enough forcing on the coupled planetary system to drive it into new dynamical states; these forcings however are unconstrained by intention relative to the health of the civilization producing the technology; (d) on a planet with a mature technosphere, feedback loops between technological activity and biogeochemical and biogeophysical states have been intentionally modified to ensure maximum stability and productivity of the full system; alongside each planetary image, we show a schematic atmospheric spectrum; an immature biosphere would show an atmosphere mostly in equilibrium dominated perhaps by carbon dioxide (CO2); in a mature biosphere life would have changed atmospheric chemistry leading to a highly non-equilibrium state such as perhaps high concentrations of oxygen (O2); in an immature technosphere new ‘pollutant’ species appear, such as CFCs, while industrial activities such as combustion may alter the abundance of other pre-existing gases like CO2 and methane; in a mature technosphere all atmospheric constituents may have their concentrations modified to produce long-term stable and productive states for the full (civilization + biosphere) system; this is represented via a range of possible peaks for different constituents. Image credit: Frank et al., doi: 10.1017/S147355042100029X.
“If we ever hope to survive as a species, we must use our intelligence for the greater good of the planet,” said lead author Professor Adam Frank, a researcher in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester.
Professor Frank and his colleagues draw from ideas such as the Gaia hypothesis — which proposes that the biosphere interacts strongly with the non-living geological systems of air, water, and land to maintain Earth’s habitable state — to explain that even a non-technologically capable species can display planetary intelligence.
The key is that the collective activity of life creates a system that is self-maintaining.
“For example, many recent studies have shown how the roots of the trees in a forest connect via underground networks of fungi known as mycorrhizal networks,” Professor Frank said.
“If one part of the forest needs nutrients, the other parts send the stressed portions the nutrients they need to survive, via the mycorrhizal network. In this way, the forest maintains its own viability.”
“Right now, our civilization is what the researchers call an immature technosphere, a conglomeration of human-generated systems and technology that directly affects the planet but is not self-maintaining.”
“For instance, the majority of our energy usage involves consuming fossil fuels that degrade Earth’s oceans and atmosphere.”
“The technology and energy we consume to survive are destroying our home planet, which will, in turn, destroy our species.”
“To survive as a species, then, we need to collectively work in the best interest of the planet.”
“But we don’t yet have the ability to communally respond in the best interests of the planet. There is intelligence on Earth, but there isn’t planetary intelligence.”
The authors posit four stages of Earth’s past and possible future (immature biosphere, mature biosphere, immature technosphere, and mature technosphere) to illustrate how planetary intelligence might play a role in humanity’s long-term future.
They also show how these stages of evolution driven by planetary intelligence may be a feature of any planet in our Galaxy that evolves life and a sustainable technological civilization.
“Planets evolve through immature and mature stages, and planetary intelligence is indicative of when you get to a mature planet,” Professor Frank said.
“The million-dollar question is figuring out what planetary intelligence looks like and means for us in practice because we don’t know how to move to a mature technosphere yet.”
Although we don’t yet know specifically how planetary intelligence might manifest itself, the researchers note that a mature technosphere involves integrating technological systems with Earth through a network of feedback loops that make up a complex system.
Put simply, a complex system is anything built from smaller parts that interact in such a fashion that the overall behavior of the system is entirely dependent on the interaction. That is, the sum is more than the whole of its parts.
Examples of complex systems include forests, the Internet, financial markets, and the human brain.
By its very nature, a complex system has entirely new properties that emerge when individual pieces are interacting. It is difficult to discern the personality of a human being, for instance, solely by examining the neurons in her brain.
That means it is difficult to predict exactly what properties might emerge when individuals form a planetary intelligence.
However, a complex system like planetary intelligence will, according to the scientists, have two defining characteristics: it will have emergent behavior and will need to be self-maintaining.
“The biosphere figured out how to host life by itself billions of years ago by creating systems for moving around nitrogen and transporting carbon,” Professor Frank said.
“Now we have to figure out how to have the same kind of self-maintaining characteristics with the technosphere.”
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Adam Frank et al. Intelligence as a planetary scale process. International Journal of Astrobiology, published online February 7, 2022; doi: 10.1017/S147355042100029X
