Animal and Fungus, Neurons the Difference
A Brief History of Intelligence is written by an AI engineer who studied the brain! So why did Max Bennett study the brain? “The relations between AI and the brain goes both ways, while the brain can surely teach us about how to create artificial humanlike intelligence, AI can also teach us about the brain.” He clarifies early: it is the human brain he is referring to, not brains in general. He starts from the beginning, from the evolution of neurons . Fungus. It is closer to animals than plants. How? Because fungus cannot do photosynthesis; it takes in food and oxygen. Yet one lineage (animals) went on to develop brains whereas the other (fungi) didn’t. Why the difference? Well, animals and fungi adopted different strategies for food – animals kill (plants or other animals) and then digest food inside themselves. Fungi wait for things to die and then digest them outside their body. Fungi use a spray-and-pray approach – they spray trillions of singled ...