Could Nature be the best consultants?

AI is Great, but Nature is Better.

In the age of AI, our focus is often on machine learning and artificial intelligence as solutions to the world's challenges. While AI has proven very efficient at automation, trend spotting, and natural language processing, we must remember that all AI inputs are human-made. AI acts as a “super” human and responds to our questions by sourcing information from the vast expanse of human knowledge that we have digitally documented. However, it cannot tap into our planet’s wisdom. Since the dawn of time, nature has been our teacher and continues to be.

Nature’s Endless Source of Inspiration.

Scientists have never stopped observing nature, leading to mimicry and genius inventions. These innovations have not only improved our lives but also our impact on the planet. One textbook example is Velcro, created by George de Mestral after observing how burdock seeds, with their hook-like structures, stuck to his socks.

There are countless examples of nature’s inspiring designs. The design of wind turbine blades optimised for aerodynamics and efficiency mimics humpback whale fins. Skyscraper glass coatings, inspired by the UV-reflective properties of spider webs, have reduced bird collisions by 70%.

Biotech is not the only field that benefits from nature’s knowledge. Vernacular innovations, such as semi-moons designed to produce grapes for wine in Lanzarote, have drastically slowed down desertification of Sub-Saharan countries like Niger and Mauritania. Semi-moons capture the moisture in the air and direct the condensed water to the plant's roots, creating favorable conditions for these plants to grow - and even yield fruit!

These innovations result from observations and often scientific experiments to better understand and pinpoint how nature works. They tend to focus on a particular remarkable feature in an animal or plant, an unexplained behavior, or a physical trait, with the goal of replicating the technology and adapting it to solve human problems.

But What If We Went Further and Used Nature as Consultants?

Tokyo’s railway system is known to be the most efficient in the world. In 2010, Toshiyuki Nakagaki used slime mold—a single-celled, brainless organism—to replicate the Tokyo rail network by placing oat flakes as city representations and observing the mold’s path-forming behavior. Within 48 hours, the slime had designed a network that was more efficient than Nakagaki’s ingenious Nobel Prize-winning railway system.

Using nature as a consultant doesn’t only work with slime mold. In 2005, Karaboga developed the Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) algorithm. To optimize resources, bees inform other members of the colony about the whereabouts of patches of flowers. Bees evaluate the quality of the food source and decide whether to continue exploiting it or search for better options. Their behavior proved to be a mathematically efficient and flexible system and is now used as the BCO algorithm to optimize the routes that data take through a network.

Using nature as a consultant not only pushes us to learn from nature’s successful ancient systems, and remove human biases but also broadens our scope for disruptive innovations that are aligned with the planet. In solving climate change challenges, we must co-create with nature and design solutions that benefit both humans and the planet.

Here’s yet another reason to preserve our ecosystem: it is a free living library as old as the world itself!

- "Could Nature be the best consultants? " Article 3, Understanding Tomorrow, Kim Siew.

Disclaimer: I do not consider myself as an expert. I am just a curious guy with a curious hobby - writing.