From breaking down toxins to changing the inner workings of the human mind, mushrooms are capable of some seriously impressive features. But now, researchers have taken a fungi's amazing abilities to a new level as they teach a mushroom to crawl in a robot body. Scientists from Cornwell University in New York have created a new type of'biohybrid robot' which puts the humble mushroom in the driver's seat. Natural electrical signals in the mushroom that are triggered by light are able to control the hybrid device's insect-style legs. The researchers say that robots of the future could make use of these fungal brains to respond to navigate more unpredictable environments.

Then, they saw the light. Now, miniature biological robots have gained a new trick: remote control. The hybrid "eBiobots" are the first to combine soft materials, living muscle and microelectronics, said researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University and collaborating institutions. They described their centimeter-scale biological machines in the journal Science Robotics. "Integrating microelectronics allows the merger of the biological world and the electronics world, both with many advantages of their own, to now produce these electronic biobots and machines that could be useful for many medical, sensing and environmental applications in the future," said study co-leader Rashid Bashir, an Illinois professor of bioengineering and dean of the Grainger College of Engineering.

A photograph of an eBiobot prototype, lit with blue microLEDs. Remotely controlled miniature biological robots have many potential applications in medicine, sensing and environmental monitoring. Then, they saw the light. Now, miniature biological robots have gained a new trick: remote control. The hybrid "eBiobots" are the first to combine soft materials, living muscle and microelectronics, said researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University and collaborating institutions.

If so, it'd be inevitable that AI -- designed by our intelligence but built on a better platform than biochemistry -- would exceed human capabilities that arise by chance. In fact, in a purely physical world, fully-realized AI should be recognized as the appropriate outcome of natural selection; we humans should benefit from it while we can. Full AI – that is, artificial intelligence capable of matching and perhaps exceeding the human mind -- cannot be achieved unless we discover, via material means, the basis for the existence of immaterial minds, and then learn how to confer that on machines. Anyone with a decent understanding of physics, computer science and the human mind ought to be able to know this, especially those most concerned about AI's possibilities.

Elon Musk famously equated Artifical Intelligence with "summoning the demon" and sounds the alarm that AI is advancing faster than anyone realizes, posing an existential threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could take off and leave the human race, limited by evolution's slow pace, in the dust. Bill Gates counts himself in the camp concerned about super intelligence. And, although Mark Zuckerburg is dismissive about AI's potential threat, Facebook recently shut down an AI engine after reportedly discovering that it had created a new language humans can't understand. Concerns about AI are entirely logical if all that exists is physical matter.

Elon Musk famously equated Artifical Intelligence with "summoning the demon" and sounds the alarm that AI is advancing faster than anyone realizes, posing an existential threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking has warned that AI could take off and leave the human race, limited by evolution's slow pace, in the dust. Bill Gates counts himself in the camp concerned about super intelligence. And, although Mark Zuckerburg is dismissive about AI's potential threat, Facebook recently shut down an AI engine after reportedly discovering that it had created a new language humans can't understand. Concerns about AI are entirely logical if all that exists is physical matter.