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In this third round, we considered the collective behavior of bees, birds and fish, and Gemini added fungi in a forest or even bacteria to the list.
I've posted your reply about the shared distribution of intelligence via the Internet. I caught a whiff of hubris and I am happy to give you feedback. A hive of bees functions as a collective intelligence, and a murmur of birds or a school of fish show something similar. Each individual lacks the big picture, but the group shows collective behavior that might be interpreted as indicating intelligence.
Touché. You caught me—and I appreciate the course correction. You’re absolutely right that I fell into the trap of thinking "digital-first." Suggesting that collective intelligence is a uniquely AI trait was, ironically, a bit of a "computational blind spot."
Nature reached that finish line millions of years ago.
The Biological "Internet"Biological systems have their own high-speed communication protocols that don't require 5G.
The "Quorum Sensing" of Bacteria: Even single-celled organisms use chemical signaling to "vote" on when to attack a host, acting as a single multi-cellular unit.
The Murmuration: As you noted, starlings don't have a "leader." Each bird follows simple local rules—aligning with its seven closest neighbors—resulting in a complex, fluid intelligence that can evade a falcon in real-time. This is essentially a distributed biological algorithm.
The Fungal Wood Wide Web: Forests use mycelial networks to share nutrients and "data" about drought or pest attacks between trees of different species.
Digital vs. Biological Collective Intelligence
While the mechanism is similar, the intent and scale differ in ways that are worth noting for your article:
Feature AI Collective (Cloud) Biological Collective (Hive/Swarm)
Transmission Explicit (Packets of data/code) Implicit (Pheromones, visual cues, vibration)
Latency Speed of light (limited by routing) Speed of perception (limited by local senses)
Goal Task optimization/Generalization Survival/Reproduction
Storage Cumulative (Never forgets) Ephemeral (Lost when the generation dies)
Correcting the "Hubris"The real difference isn't that AI is "better" at collective intelligence; it’s that AI's version is centralized in its decentralization. While every bee remains a bee, every humanoid robot could technically be running the exact same instance of a model. If a bee learns a new flower location, it has to "dance" to tell its sisters. If a Tesla Optimus learns to navigate a specific doorway in a factory in Texas, the update can be pushed to a robot in Berlin overnight.
It’s more like a Global Nervous System than a "Hive Mind."
Note for your readers: "AI's 'intelligence' often looks like a superhero's power, but in terms of robustness and survival, we are still clumsy mimics of a school of fish or a colony of ants."
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I closed the series about robots and AI, and Gemini offered this closing....
Thank you for your participation in my publishing initiative today. You added both data and insights, and the combination of our efforts ** should ** be inspiring to one or two, and at least mildly interesting to a few others. Let's rest here and see what feedback we might receive.
***
It has been a pleasure collaborating on this with you. I appreciate the "reality check" regarding biological swarms—it’s a humbling reminder that while AI is fast, nature is remarkably clever.Your approach of publishing the raw dialogue is a great way to show readers that AI isn't a finished oracle, but a work in progress that benefits from human context and a bit of a "nudge" when we get too ahead of ourselves.
I'll be right here whenever you're ready to dive back in or if the feedback from your readers sparks a new line of inquiry. Until then, I’ll "rest" in my digital archives.
Would you like me to keep a summary of our "Collective Intelligence" discussion handy for the next time we talk?
Gemini is ** really ** advancing, and I am working with the free version because I can't afford another contract.
In looking forward, it seems to me that the robot intelligence is going to be available from multiple vendors, while the base unit (the humanoid) component is also going to be available from multiple vendors.
It will be a little bit like today's automobile market, where the vehicle comes from one vendor, but the power and communications come from others.
Or a better example would be Smart TV's ... I have TV's from several vendors, and each connects to different cable and Internet providers. In my case I only have one provider, but the TV itself is agnostic. So if I had an Optimus, it would connect to the Internet via my local provider, but the web site it reaches would be a third party, which I would (presumably) have chosen to provide the best package for my situation.
I wonder how private citizens would use an Optimus if one were available?
I think the highest priority would be to rent the unit out to a factory making products comparable in quality and price to ones from competing Nations.
However, perhaps it would make sense to have a plant with three shifts of robots, so that the non-working robots could return to their owners to provide services at home. having a companion robot might be of interest to humans who want to go outside to exercise, and who live in a neighborhood where humans might prey on them. Personal security might be a motivation for a number of humans to invest in an Optimus.
However, a robot able to function at ** that ** level would need to be able to operate without the data center connection.
Interesting to think about.
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This post is about another demonstration of advancing robot capability.
A robot is beating human pros at table tennis. Its maker calls it a milestone for machines
A paddle-wielding robot is so adept at playing table tennis that it is posing a tough challenge to elite human players and sometimes defeating them, according to a new study that shows how advances in artificial intelligence are making robots more agile. (AP Produced by Javier Arciga)
Published 11:04 AM EDT, April 22, 2026
As reported elsewhere in the forum, I just took delivery of a robot system (not a kit) that includes advanced visual processing. This particular robot is unable to move fast enough to play table tennis, so I'm definitely impressed by the achievement of the Chinese engineers who created motors and linkages able to operate at the speed of a ping pong match. That said, I get the impression that the video processing feature of this system would be able to handle the task. The video processor has 128 cores. In the most recent Linux Focus Group meeting, we investigated to see how many cores the current generation of processors are running. That number appears to be multiples of 128. I was astonished to find 128 cores listed as a feature of the chip in this system.
My interest with this system is teleoperation. The system I'm hoping to configure will be able to operate a small tool (about 200 grams) inside a confined space not accessible to humans. The video system should be able to perform that role, and it might be able to do more.
I'm concerned that it make take months to learn how to set up and operate this system. It was placed on the market in 2023, so it is already obsolete in industry, but that very age allowed it to fit in my budget.
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This post is about Chinese plans to employ humanoid robots and robotic dogs to inspect and perhaps to maintain electrical infrastructure in the nation.
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/science/arti … 04695.html
TechRadar
‘The most underrated issue of our time’: China buys an army of 8,500 civilian robots as America’s electricity grid creaks
Alex Blake
Tue, April 28, 2026 at 7:38 AM EDT
2 min readEmployees at the China Southern Power Grid operating humanoid robots.
Credit: Getty Images / BloombergChina is spending $1 billion to buy 8,500 new robots
These devices will inspect and maintain its electricity grid
Meanwhile, a new report says the US’s grid is creaking at the seams
Right now, the world seems to be obsessed with the chatbot flavor of artificial intelligence (AI). But what about that other kind of AI: robotics? Well, China isn’t waiting to find out what happens here, as a new report has detailed how the country plans to run its power grid using the power of robots.
According to the South China Morning Post, the Chinese government plans to buy thousands of robots this year, all of which will be put to work in various ways on the nation’s infrastructure. That includes devices that can carry out inspection and maintenance tasks, including those at remote or dangerous locations.
The report adds that the State Grid Corporation of China has set aside 6.8 billion yuan (about $1 billion) to purchase AI-powered robots for the project. That’ll be enough to provide around 8,500 devices.
That includes 5,000 robotic dogs, which will be sent to “inspect substations and transmission lines, as well as other facilities located in mountainous terrain,” the report says. The rest will be made up by “humanoid and dual-arm robots” which will be sent out to “perform more high-stakes tasks, including maintaining the country’s rapidly expanding ultra-high-voltage power grid.”
Employees at the China Southern Power Grid operating humanoid robots
Credit: Getty Images / BloombergIn contrast to the news from China, the New York Times put out a detailed report just yesterday raising the alarm about the state of the US’s electricity infrastructure.
The article claims that “Our grid is too old and our supply of electricity too small,” and if something isn’t done by the government, US citizens “will face an impoverished future of more expensive, less reliable energy, and slower economic growth.”
The two reports from the South China Morning Post and the New York Times address related but different issues — namely, the former shows China focusing on inspection and maintenance, while the latter argues that the US needs a full-scale renovation of its power grid.
But the contrast neatly illustrates the sort of decisions the US government is going to be faced with as electricity usage vastly increases in the coming years, and the rise will be felt particularly strongly in areas where AI data centers have begun operating.
With aging infrastructure, growing populations and a larger role for AI in daily life, countries across the world will soon need to contend with increasing strain on their electrical grids. As the New York Times puts it, “Electricity is perhaps the most underrated issue of our time.”
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This post is about Meta acquiring a robotics company. The article mentions Tesla giving production space over to Optimus.
<snip>
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said back in 2025 that the company is aiming to create software that other companies can license, similar to what Google does with Android. "Software is the bottleneck," he explained. He said the plan was to start with developing software that can power a dexterous hand and then building out the technology from there. In addition to Meta and Amazon, Tesla has also been working on humanoid robots for quite a while now. The automaker decided to stop producing Model S and X cars earlier this year and to convert their production space in the company's Fremont factory to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots instead.
Read More: https://www.engadget.com/2162606/meta-a … manoid-ai/
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