Perspectives
More Is Different, More Than Ever
Major Transitions From Biological Development to Planetary Intelligence
Perspective · November 2026
This perspective develops ideas around multiscale intelligence, symbiogenesis, cultural evolution, and AI alignment, emphasizing the role of LLMs as cultural “genomes”.
Abstract
Biology is organized in layers within layers, where the components of one level form the substrate for the next higher level of organization. The collaborative principles behind such self-organizing systems – from symbiosis and symbiogenesis to collective and multiscale intelligence – may also be central to AI alignment. Departing from the picture of a genetic blueprint, modern interpretations view the genome as a generative model of organismal development: a compact, interactive library of evolutionarily encoded survival lessons of the past that is actively decoded and interpreted by cellular agents according to their multicellular developmental context. Large language models may be becoming something similar for cultural evolution: a compact, generative, interactable memory of collective human knowledge. In both cases, i.e., for cells or humans, this allows single agents to efficiently gain access to competencies they never acquired individually, and use them to coordinate their behavior within a more complex multicellular or multiagent Umwelt, respectively. In turn, this suggests that we may be approaching another major evolutionary “symbiomemetic” transition, driven by the co-evolution of biological and artificial intelligence. Rather than focusing exclusively on aligning or controlling a singular artificial general intelligence, we should therefore ask how humans, machines, institutions, ecosystems, and the biosphere can be integrated into a higher level of organization – a planetary superintelligence.