The cognitive revolution of the 1950s introduced a computational view of human intelligence, enabling the formation of new and powerful theories, research methods based on computational modeling, and interdisciplinary bridges spanning neuroscience, psychology, and AI. As impactful as this revolution has been, it has focused almost exclusively on human and animal intelligences. We suspect that plants pose an opportunity for a cognitive revolution of similar scale and impact that could transform theories of plant cognition and lead to new paradigms of plant-inspired AI.
This project seeks to advance the dual sciences of plant cognitive science and plant-inspired AI. Through three interlocking aims, we seek to highlight computational modeling as a valuable but substantially underutilized methodology in this area, especially relative to its ubiquity in human/animal-inspired cognitive science and AI.
First, we will create an interdisciplinary primer that will: 1) provide a conceptual framework for what it means to have cognitive theories of plant behavior; 2) describe how such theories can be instantiated as computational models; 3) map out existing research on computational models of plant cognition; and 4) analyze plant phenomena ripe for computational modeling research.
Second, we will propose a seminar to bring together experts in AI, cognitive science, and plant biology and help pin down common theoretical frameworks, envision challenge problems, and chart out next steps.
Third, we will develop preliminary designs for a research competition in plant-inspired AI. Such competitions regularly lead to major theoretical and technical advances and boost collaboration, student training, and research visibility.
This project will effect change by raising the profile of plant cognitive science and plant-inspired AI in scientific discourse, as well as by catalyzing new research and new collaborations in concrete, actionable ways.
