The mycorrhizal network challenges assumptions about where machine intelligence resides.

Evidence

Illuminates AI/Communication: Powers’s nine-storied novel of trees and the humans who love them reframes machine communication by reminding readers that the planet’s largest communicating network is mycorrhizal. The chapters on Patricia Westerford, modeled on Suzanne Simard, recast “the wood wide web” as both literal biology and metaphor for distributed intelligence. Placed beside debates over LLM “understanding,” The Overstory asks whether we are misrecognizing intelligence at every scale. The Olivia/Nick activism plot also offers a darker reading: that even networked sentience is no protection against extractive capital. — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 3170

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the wood-wide-web research of Suzanne Simard and to LLM ‘understanding’ debates. — connects to: Intelligence develops from environment and experience rather than genetic inheritance
• SEED: Article angle: misrecognizing intelligence at every scale as a critique of scaling assumptions in AI.

Broader Connections

• Intelligence develops from environment and experience rather than genetic inheritance #complicates (0.60)