Intelligence—currently defined through the lens of neural networks—is in fact an approximation of human sensing. But human sensing itself emerges from a much broader, largely unaccounted-for web of “life sensing”: the distributed, energetic, and relational perceptual processes that animate all living systems. It is this more total form of sensing—prior to cognition and prior even to neurons—that underwrites what we later come to recognize as human intelligence.

Human intelligence evolved from life sensing.

We hypothesize that a deeper, more universal definition of intelligence can be constructed by studying how life itself processes energy and information in decentralized systems. We propose to explore this hypothesis by observing and modeling how Rhizophagus irregularis—a multinucleate, non-neural fungus—coordinates signal flow and resource allocation using energy-constrained mitochondrial and cytoplasmic processes.