Let’s put AI in conversation with NI (natural intelligence). What will happen when an AI and a slime mould get to chatting with each other?
Slime molds occupy a fascinating biological niche - despite being single-celled organisms, they exhibit surprisingly complex behaviors including problem-solving capabilities and environmental adaptation. Scientists study them for their prototypical neuron-like behaviors, drawing parallels to much more complex nervous systems. Meanwhile, Large Language Models attempt to simulate human-like reasoning and communication through computational means. Both systems represent different approaches to “intelligence” - one evolved through billions of years of biological processes, the other engineered through mathematical models and trained on human-created data.
sLLM began conceptually as a playful response to the widespread cultural fascination with artificial intelligence. The initial idea was simply to place a live-streamed slime mold beside a chat interface, creating a humorous juxtaposition between cutting-edge AI chat experiences and the slow, alien intelligence of a simple organism.
However, this evolved into a more substantive exploration of cross-species communication. The project doesn’t claim to achieve “true” communication with slime molds, but instead examines what happens when we create systems that translate between fundamentally different modes of being. By exposing the slime mold to various controlled stimuli (changes in temperature, humidity, light frequency, and chemical environment) in response to human text input, we can observe whether consistent patterns emerge in the organism’s electrical activity.
This isn’t traditional scientific research but rather an artistic experiment that prompts us to question our assumptions about communication, consciousness, and the increasingly blurry line between biological and artificial intelligence. Like using a car to carry water instead of people, we might discover unexpected capabilities and connections through this deliberate misuse of both biological systems and language models.