Thinking About Thinking ... Plants?

Gizem Karaali

July 1, 2024

An artistic representation of trees communicating with each other, capturing the metaphorical concept of plant communication. [Image created by ChatGPT / DALL-E on July 1, 2024.]

One of the points we made in our paper "Computo, Ergo Sum: Teaching and Learning Mathematics in the Age of ChatGPT" (available for now at https://gkaraali.sites.pomona.edu/research/ComputoErgoSum.pdf) was about how the possibility of an emergent intelligence surpassing our own could help us. We wrote:

"As a species valuing and ranking its intelligence and creativity above all others on this planet, we humans have been rather proud and rash stewards of our world and its inhabitants. In many instances of optimistic science fiction where humanity extends its reach beyond our own solar system, we have inserted nonhuman characters into the narrative, characters who were far superior to ourselves in various ways but still wanted desperately to be like us. Star Trek alone gave us a handful of such characters, such as Commander Data of The Next Generation and the holographic Doctor of The Voyager. And each time a new artificial intelligence beat us at a game of intellect (e.g., chess, go, Jeopardy), we dismissed the significance of the event."

"However now that ChatGPT is here talking to whoever wants to talk to it, now that we are all able to interact with this courteous and most capable interlocutor, maybe we will grow some humility about our intelligence. Now that it is impossible for a human to have been more well-read than any of these large language models, maybe we will grow some more compassion for those who have read less, who have learned less, who know less. Maybe we will be more open to different possibilities about our place on this planet and in this universe."

Of course it is purely hypothetical that this is how we will choose to react. But in the meantime, we have ... plants! Yes, plants. 

Did you know that plants communicate with their relatives? That they can hear? That they can count? For more on all this, you can listen to or read the transcript of this conversation: https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2024/05/the-botany-revolution/678265/ And you can read more from Zoë Schlanger who is being interviewed here at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/06/plant-consciousness-intelligence-light-eaters/678207/ 

Another intriguing example of what can arguably be called plant intelligence can be found at https://www.quantamagazine.org/across-a-continent-trees-sync-their-fruiting-to-the-sun-20240618/: "European beech trees more than 1,500 kilometers apart all drop their fruit at the same time in a grand synchronization event now linked to the summer solstice."

Some computer scientists claim that when we use human learning and creativity language to refer to certain processes that machines perform, we are not only misusing metaphorical language, we are actually misleading ourselves. So maybe this is the same for plant biologists who claim that plants communicate, hear, or count? 

I, being a math person, was most curious about what it means when someone says a plant can count. An example is apparently everyone's favorite carnivorous plant, the Venus flytrap, A team of German scientists published a paper in 2016 titled "The Venus Flytrap Dionaea muscipula Counts Prey-Induced Action Potentials to Induce Sodium Uptake"; see https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)01501-8 if you want to read the full paper. But basically, the plant counts up to five until it closes up on a prey. Pretty cool! 

It seems to me like whenever we try to break down what intelligence means, we get to building blocks that are found in all sorts of other living beings on our planet. In her conversation with Reid Hoffman, Krista Tippett coined the term "humanity of the gaps". She said:

"I think one thing that happens sometimes in the, some of the worrying, and just the reasonable deliberation about what AI might mean, this new AI might mean, is there’s this impulse to say, “Well, what is it that is always going to be distinct about human beings? So what is it that it will never be able to do and that we have to hold this ground?”

"But I guess I also think about how the science-religion dialogue across time, a false direction that it went for a while after the Enlightenment was, “Well, let’s keep a space for what only God can do that science can’t do.” But then science progressed, and then this space for God and for these kinds of, this kind of belief and intuition and questioning got smaller and smaller and smaller."

"And that was called “the God of the Gaps.” I feel like a false direction we go is trying to stake out and protect “the humanity of the gaps,” and that we might have a lot of the same problem as this AI continues to live into its full powers."

[See https://onbeing.org/programs/reid-hoffman-ai-and-what-it-means-to-be-more-human/ for the full conversation; it is very interesting.]

So humanity of the gaps, or at least intelligence of the gaps, is likely a game we will likely end up losing. And this is not merely about artificial intelligence; it is about all life on our planet. So why do we want to play that game in the first place? Would it not be better to try and consider coexistence and, dare I say, mutual flourishing?