Taking lessons from a sea slug, study points to better hardware for artificial intelligence

Researchers mimic the animal kingdom's most basic signs of intelligence in quantum material WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- For artificial intelligence to get any smarter, it needs first to be as intelligent as one of the simplest creatures in the animal kingdom: the sea slug. A new study has found that a material can mimic the sea slug's most essential intelligence features. The discovery is a step toward building hardware that could help make AI more efficient and reliable for technology ranging from self-driving cars and surgical robots to social media algorithms. The study, publishing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was conducted by a team of researchers from Purdue University, Rutgers University, the University of Georgia and Argonne National Laboratory. "Through studying sea slugs, neuroscientists discovered the hallmarks of intelligence that are fundamental to any organism's survival," said Shriram Ramanathan, a Purdue professor of materials engineering.