Is Planetary Intelligence Already Emerging?

New science, ancient knowledge, artificial intelligence, and the unanswered questions about a living Earth

Planetary Intelligence — Research & Reflection | October 29, 2026

Something interesting is happening. Across fields as different as astrobiology, ecology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, and Indigenous studies, people are asking questions that would once have seemed almost unthinkable.

Can intelligence exist without brains? Can ecosystems exhibit collective intelligence? Does the Earth, understood as a complex living system, possess some capacity for learning, adaptation, or self-regulation that we might legitimately call intelligence? And might humanity’s rapidly expanding technological intelligence become part of a larger, more life-supporting planetary process?

These questions are no longer confined to speculative philosophy. They are increasingly appearing in scientific journals, research laboratories, university programs, and conversations among people working to restore the living Earth.

The recent EcoRestoration Alliance Masterclass and Didi Pershouse’s essay, Layers of Intelligence in Living Systems, are reminders of this growing convergence.

But convergence does not necessarily mean consensus. The word intelligence is being used in different ways, and some of the most intriguing possibilities remain untested.

This is a good moment to explore what is actually happening—and what questions deserve much closer examination.

1. From individual intelligence to planetary intelligence

In 2022, astrophysicists Adam Frank and David Grinspoon, together with theoretical physicist Sara Walker, published Intelligence as a Planetary Scale Process.

Their central proposition was that intelligence need not be understood exclusively as a property of individual organisms. It can also emerge through the interactions of many components, potentially extending to planetary scale.

They distinguish between an immature technosphere, in which technological civilization destabilizes the planetary conditions on which it depends, and a potentially mature technosphere, capable of maintaining a sustainable relationship with the biosphere.

Our present civilization, in this framework, remains profoundly immature.

A March 2026 paper by Lukáš Likavčan and Adam Frank takes the argument further, examining how a planetary perspective might reshape political economy and humanity’s understanding of its place within Earth’s metabolic systems.

These ideas build on the legacy of Vladimir Vernadsky’s biosphere, James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis’s Gaia hypothesis, and the evolving notion of a noosphere—the domain of thought and knowledge associated with life on Earth.

Yet an intriguing possibility deserves more attention.

What if planetary intelligence is not primarily something humanity must create, but something already present in the biosphere, which humanity is only beginning to recognize and perhaps participate in more consciously?

This would reverse the usual assumption that intelligence arises on Earth only with organisms possessing nervous systems, eventually culminating in humans and artificial intelligence.

Instead, intelligence might have a much deeper evolutionary history, expressed through multiple forms of sensing, memory, communication, cooperation, and adaptation.

That is a hypothesis worth investigating, not a conclusion we can presently claim to have established.

2. The many intelligences of living systems

Didi Pershouse approaches the subject from another direction.

In Layers of Intelligence in Living Systems, published in February, she describes nested processes of discernment operating across living systems: cellular membranes selectively admitting substances, fungi acquiring nutrients, animals learning feeding behaviors, communities processing information, and ecosystems maintaining conditions favorable to life.

Her broader argument is that humanity has disrupted many of these processes, compromising not only ecological integrity but our own capacities for sound judgment.

What makes this perspective especially valuable is its insistence that intelligence is not simply about accumulating information. It is also about discerning what matters and responding appropriately.

Scientific work is beginning to explore related questions, although not necessarily with the same definition of intelligence.

Michael Levin and colleagues at Tufts University study how cells coordinate their activities through biochemical and bioelectrical signaling. Their research suggests that some aspects of development and regeneration can be understood as forms of collective problem-solving.

A 2025 paper by Levin examines collective intelligence in living tissues, while a 2026 review of plant embodied intelligence explores distributed information processing, adaptive growth, memory, and environmental responsiveness in plants.

The biological capabilities under investigation are real. Whether they justify the broader language of cognition or intelligence is an active scientific and philosophical debate.

And there are important cautions. A widely discussed 2023 analysis in Nature Ecology & Evolution warned that popular accounts of forest-wide fungal communication have often extended beyond the available evidence.

We should be equally willing to recognize the extraordinary sophistication of living systems and to question attractive stories that the evidence cannot yet support.

3. Could the Earth itself exhibit agency?

One of the most intriguing developments this year appeared in August 2026.

In An Elementary Form of Agency at Planetary-Scale, Sergio Rubin, Conor Heins, Takahito Mitsui, Lancelot Da Costa, Karl Friston, and colleagues investigate whether a simplified biosphere–climate system can be modeled as exhibiting a minimal form of agency.

Using the mathematical framework known as active inference, they explore how interacting biological and climatic processes might respond to environmental disturbances in ways that help maintain conditions compatible with life.

Their model demonstrates a possible mechanism for adaptive planetary-scale regulation under specified assumptions.

It does not establish that the actual Earth is conscious, possesses intentions, or literally thinks.

Nevertheless, it offers something scientifically important: a way to begin translating the language of planetary agency into models that can be investigated, challenged, and potentially falsified.

This is precisely where an emerging field becomes interesting.

What kinds of feedback, information processing, and adaptive response distinguish a merely complex physical system from a system displaying genuine agency?

Could planetary self-regulation emerge without any centralized controller? Might apparently intelligent planetary behavior arise through natural selection operating at lower levels, without selection among planets?

These are difficult questions, and the answers are far from obvious.

4. Artificial intelligence is acquiring planetary senses

Meanwhile, a parallel development is occurring in technology.

Organizations such as the Group on Earth Observations, Planet Labs, Google Research, and Stanford University’s Sustainability Accelerator are developing systems that combine satellite observations, environmental measurements, advanced computation, and artificial intelligence.

Their objective is to transform enormous quantities of Earth-system data into useful knowledge for decisions about climate, biodiversity, agriculture, water, disasters, and human well-being.

In May 2026, Planet Labs CEO Will Marshall published an essay titled Planetary Intelligence, envisioning AI systems equipped with continuous observations of the physical world.

In August, Google Research introduced an experimental planetary prediction engine, designed to automate parts of the process of developing geospatial predictive models.

And a recent paper in One Earth, Toward Actionable Planetary Boundary Intelligence, proposes more timely, validated, uncertainty-aware monitoring of critical Earth-system processes.

Such developments are especially urgent as scientists report that seven of nine planetary boundaries have been transgressed.

But we need to distinguish two propositions.

One is that AI can help humans understand planetary processes more accurately and respond more effectively. That is a credible and rapidly developing technological possibility.

The other is that linking AI with planetary sensing will somehow produce an intelligent Earth system capable of acting wisely in its own long-term interest.

That second proposition is much more ambitious—and remains speculative.

More information does not automatically produce better judgment. Better prediction does not guarantee wiser decisions. And greater computational capability does not necessarily imply greater ecological intelligence.

The distinction may prove decisive.

5. Who gets to define planetary intelligence?

The sociocultural dimensions of this emerging conversation may be as consequential as the scientific ones.

In June 2026, anthropologist Adam Fish published Planetary Intelligence: Space Industries, Renewable Energy, and the Technosphere.

Fish challenges the assumption that technologically enabled planetary coordination will necessarily produce a more sustainable or just civilization. Satellite networks, energy infrastructures, and the minerals and territories they depend on can reproduce patterns of extraction and dispossession.

His discussion of a First Nations organization in Australia suggests another possibility: technologies serving planetary goals can be developed through locally grounded priorities and relationships, rather than imposed through centralized global systems.

This raises an uncomfortable question.

Whose intelligence is being assembled into the planetary system—and whose is being left out?

Many Indigenous traditions have long emphasized reciprocal relationships among humans, animals, plants, water, land, and the wider living world. Smallholder farmers, pastoralists, forest communities, and other place-based practitioners also possess forms of ecological knowledge developed through generations of observation and experience.

These traditions are not interchangeable, nor should they be romanticized as a single body of ancient wisdom. They deserve engagement on their own terms.

The emerging technological approach to Earth intelligence may benefit greatly from these perspectives. Indeed, the Group on Earth Observations explicitly recognizes the importance of knowledge co-produced with local and Indigenous communities.

But consultation alone is insufficient.

If planetary intelligence is to become a genuinely participatory undertaking, communities must be able to influence the questions being asked, the data being collected, the interpretation of findings, and the decisions that follow.

Otherwise, we risk building extraordinarily sophisticated systems for observing the Earth while continuing to disregard many of the people who know how to care for particular places.

6. The unanswered scientific questions

Several questions seem especially suitable for a serious interdisciplinary research program.

What should count as intelligence? Is adaptive behavior enough? Must a system possess memory, learn from experience, anticipate future conditions, or pursue identifiable goals? How do we distinguish intelligence from ordinary feedback and self-organization?

At what scales can intelligence emerge? We can investigate signaling and coordinated behavior in cells, organisms, colonies, and ecosystems. But what additional evidence would justify extending such interpretations to the biosphere as a whole?

Does Earth-system regulation imply planetary agency? The Gaia hypothesis describes important interactions between life and its environment. But do these interactions constitute agency, and how might we test that interpretation against alternative explanations?

Can intelligence be measured independently of our preferred outcomes? We must avoid defining planetary intelligence simply as whatever preserves habitability or supports human well-being. An adequate scientific theory should produce predictions that could turn out to be wrong.

Can AI enhance the adaptive capacity of living systems? Could models combining satellite observations, ecological fieldwork, and local knowledge improve restoration decisions in ways that can be independently measured?

What is the relationship between intelligence and consciousness? They are not synonymous. We should not infer subjective experience from adaptive behavior, or assume that planetary-scale information processing implies a planetary mind.

These questions call for experiments, observational comparisons, formal models, careful definitions, and methodological humility.

7. The unanswered questions for civilization

The sociocultural questions may be even harder.

Who owns the data that would inform a planetary intelligence system? Who decides which forms of knowledge are credible, and which goals deserve priority?

Could an intelligence system designed to optimize planetary stability undermine democracy, local autonomy, or cultural diversity?

How might Indigenous concepts of reciprocity and responsibility inform the governance of technologies developed primarily within Western scientific and corporate institutions—without appropriating community knowledge?

Can the emerging systems be built so they support ecological restoration and social justice together, rather than sacrificing one to achieve the other?

What should happen when planetary-scale models recommend actions that conflict with the interests, rights, or experience of particular communities?

And perhaps most important: Can humanity become more intelligent collectively without becoming more centralized, technocratic, or controlling?

It is possible that planetary intelligence, if such a phenomenon develops through human participation, will look less like a single global mind and more like an extraordinary diversity of interconnected, learning, mutually accountable communities.

It might consist not of one intelligence, but of many forms of intelligence becoming better able to respond to one another.

8. Toward a planetary intelligence research commons

There is an opportunity to bring these emerging conversations together without prematurely declaring that we have discovered a new planetary mind.

Imagine a collaborative research network connecting Earth-system scientists, biologists, AI researchers, restoration practitioners, Indigenous knowledge holders, philosophers, social scientists, and community organizations.

Rather than beginning with a grand claim, such a network might investigate specific questions:

• How do restored landscapes regain capacities for water retention, cooling, biodiversity support, and resilience?
• Can ecological monitoring detect improvements in system-level adaptive responses, rather than merely recording changes in individual indicators?
• Can AI help interpret relationships among ecological variables while remaining transparent about uncertainty and causal limitations?
• How can community knowledge and scientific evidence be integrated without one subordinating the other?
• What governance arrangements make collective environmental decisions more informed, inclusive, and responsive to ecological feedback?

The EcoRestoration Alliance, Biodiversity for a Livable Climate, and the Climate Cooling Initiative could contribute directly to this endeavor.

Their practical work in ecosystem restoration offers opportunities to connect emerging ideas about intelligence with measurable ecological outcomes. Restoration projects could become sites where scientific models, local observations, and community decision-making are tested and improved together.

The goal would not be to prove that Earth is intelligent. It would be to investigate the conditions under which biological, technological, and social systems become more capable of sustaining life.

9. An awakening—or a new way of paying attention?

There is a sense in which humanity is awakening to the intelligence of the living world.

But perhaps awakening is a metaphor for a change in human understanding rather than evidence of a new phenomenon arising within the planet.

We are discovering increasingly sophisticated capacities for sensing, signaling, coordination, and adaptation throughout living systems. We are developing technological instruments that make previously invisible planetary processes observable. And we are beginning to confront the inadequacy of economic and political institutions that routinely ignore ecological consequences.

Whether these developments amount to the emergence of planetary intelligence remains an open question.

A more cautious—and perhaps more productive—hypothesis is that the biosphere already contains extraordinarily rich forms of distributed information processing and adaptive organization, and that humanity now has an unprecedented opportunity to understand them, work with them, and avoid destroying the conditions that sustain them.

AI may help us in this effort. But it may equally amplify the extractive habits that brought us to the present crisis.

The outcome will depend not only on technology, but on the ways we choose to organize knowledge, power, responsibility, and relationships.

Ultimately, the most important question may not be whether Earth is becoming intelligent.

It may be whether humanity can learn to participate intelligently in the Earth system of which we have always been a part.

And that is a question worth exploring together.

Selected readings

1. Frank, Grinspoon & Walker (2022) — Intelligence as a Planetary Scale Process. International Journal of Astrobiology.
2. Didi Pershouse (February 2026) — Layers of Intelligence in Living Systems. The Wisdom Underground.
3. Likavčan & Frank (March 2026) — The Planetary and Its Uses. The Anthropocene Review.
4. Will Marshall (May 2026) — Planetary Intelligence. Planet Labs.
5. Adam Fish (June 2026) — Planetary Intelligence: Space Industries, Renewable Energy, and the Technosphere. Theory, Culture & Society.
6. Rubin, Heins, Mitsui, Da Costa, Friston et al. (August 2026) — An Elementary Form of Agency at Planetary-Scale. Scientific Reports.
7. Rafiezadeh Shahi et al. (August 2026) — Toward Actionable Planetary Boundary Intelligence. One Earth.
8. Group on Earth Observations — What Is Earth Intelligence?.

This newsletter is part of an emerging inquiry into planetary intelligence, its possible scientific foundations, and its implications for humanity’s relationship with the living Earth. Responses, critical perspectives, research leads, and invitations to collaborate are welcome.