What, if anything, do animals, plants, fungi, and machines have in common when they sense their environments, process information, adapt, and generate behavior? And when, if ever, should we call these capacities intelligence?
Join us in exploring these questions at the Cross-Kingdom Intelligence Symposium!
Participation in the Symposium is free of charge, but registration is required. If you are not registered for SAB 2026, you can register for the symposium by contacting communication@scioi.de
Click here for detailed program.
The Cross-Kingdom Intelligence Symposium brings together researchers working across biological and artificial systems to explore a central question:
When we observe information processing, adaptive behavior, and flexible responses across radically different systems, are we seeing manifestations of a common phenomenon or distinct phenomena that share certain components or organizational principles?
Animals, plants, and fungi differ radically in their physical organization, sensory capacities, and ways of interacting with the environment. Yet all must respond to changing conditions and coordinate processes in ways that support survival and adaptation. Artificial systems provide a further, fundamentally different point of comparison.
Could similar challenges give rise to mechanisms that share common organizational principles, despite being realized in entirely different biological or artificial substrates? Which similarities are deep, and which are only superficial? And do such comparisons justify speaking of intelligence across kingdoms and machines or do they reveal several distinct phenomena that should remain conceptually separate?
These questions also turn the comparison back onto artificial intelligence: What can biological systems teach us about the components and principles associated with intelligent behavior, and where might analogies between biological and artificial systems break down?
The symposium brings together expert perspectives from animal behavior, plant behavior and information processing, fungal biology, and artificial intelligence. Rather than presupposing a single definition, or even a single phenomenon, of intelligence, the session uses comparison across systems to ask which capacities and principles they genuinely share, where important differences lie, and what these comparisons can tell us about intelligence itself.
The presentations will be followed by a panel discussion and an open Q&A with the audience.
Invited Speakers
The symposium brings together four invited speakers, each contributing a distinct perspective on intelligence and adaptive behavior across biological and artificial systems.
Paco Calvo — Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Murcia and Director of the Minimal Intelligence Lab (MINT Lab), with a research focus on plant cognition and intelligence.
Jens Krause — Behavioral biologist whose research explores collective intelligence, decision-making, and coordination in animal groups.
Vera Meyer — Professor at Technische Universität Berlin working at the intersection of fungal biotechnology, art, design, and architecture.
Ute Schmid — Professor of Cognitive Systems at the University of Bamberg and Executive Director of the Bamberg Center for Artificial Intelligence, with a focus on cognitive systems and explainable AI.
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Moderated by Oliver Brock — Roboticist whose research explores embodied intelligence and how intelligent behavior emerges through interactions between body, environment, and control.
