Many speak of artificial intelligence as if it is in the cloud when in fact it is material. The matter of AI is stretched out across land; it is thirsty for water, for cobalt, for silicon and copper, for electricity. And yet, the matter of AI is not alive, and its ‘intelligence’ does not need life—nor the living. Meanwhile, living organisms and their intelligence are reduced to the ability to compute, to maximize rewards in myopic, factory-like, zero-sum tasks. This idea of intelligence is fundamentally narrow—and arguably self-destructive. It dismisses the relational ecological intelligence of the living, from single cell organisms and bacteria to plants and animals. Contrasting these narrow and arguably ‘dead’ forms of intelligence are living systems that balance growth with renewal: with cyclical rather than linear progress, homeostasis not maximization, collective adaptation and mutualism rather than zero-sum competition. From slime moulds and mycelium to trees, beavers, and humans, the intelligence of life is inherently ecological. 

Drawing on two decades of multidisciplinary research—in philosophy, neuroscience, machine learning, and analysis of collective dynamics—Ida Momennejad proposes a shift to rethink intelligence in terms of life, thereby challenging utilitarian assumptions that treat both human and non-human organisms as cogs and AI as immaterial. This keynote, the accompanying slime mould experiment, and installation (with Iz A. Nettere) highlight the intelligence of life as a blueprint for reimagining societal, economic, and technological landscapes in alignment with the living.