Dr. John Huss, professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy, and Dr. Peter H. Niewiarowski, professor of integrated bioscience in the Department of Biology, are co-authors of a newly published research paper proposing a biomimetic and ethically grounded framework for artificial intelligence. The article, titled Ethically Grounded Design Paradigm for AI: A Biomimetic Approach, was published in Sciforum and co-authored by Dr. Paweł Polak and Dr. Roman Krzanowski of the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Kraków, Poland. The full paper can be accessed at: https://sciforum.net/paper/view/23219. 

The paper revisits the biological roots of AI and argues for a reorientation of how artificial intelligence is designed and implemented. Drawing on the concept of biomimicry — the practice of learning from nature’s evolutionary innovations — the authors advocate for AI systems that are more energy-efficient, ethically responsible and ecologically embedded.

The research points out that many of today’s AI systems, particularly large language models and other high-powered platforms, consume enormous amounts of energy and computing resources. According to the authors, this trajectory is unsustainable and raises serious environmental concerns.

Beyond environmental impacts, the paper also delves into questions of ethics and human-AI interaction. The researchers argue that for AI to be genuinely beneficial, it must incorporate ethical principles such as empathy, cooperation, and humility — traits found in natural symbiotic systems.

The authors suggest that biomimicry can help address these challenges by serving as a guide for how AI might evolve in ways that are aligned with life on Earth. By examining mutualistic relationships in nature — such as symbiosis between species — the researchers propose models for “beneficial AI” that coexist with, rather than dominate, its human and environmental context.

Gram-negative bacteria are highly resistant to antibiotics due to their robust outer membrane (OM), which is built and maintained by specialized molecular machinery. In a recent study, researchers from Japan uncovered how a small protein called LptM stabilizes the LptDE complex, which is essential for proper OM function. Their structural and biochemical analyses revealed how LptM fine-tunes the structure of LptDE during maturation, offering key insights that may support future antibiotics targeting this complex.

The evolutionary success of our species may have hinged on minute changes to our brain biochemistry after we diverged from the lineage leading to Neanderthals and Denisovans about half a million years ago 

Two of these tiny changes that set modern humans apart from Neanderthals and Denisovans affect the stability and genetic expression of the enzyme adenylosuccinate lyase, or ADSL. This enzyme is involved in the biosynthesis of purine, one of the fundamental building blocks of DNA, RNA, and other important biomolecules. In a study to be published in PNAS, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), Japan and the Max Plank Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Germany have discovered that these changes may play an important role in our behavior, contributing new pieces to the great puzzle of who we humans are and where we come from. “Through our study, we have gotten clues into the functional consequences of some of the molecular changes that set modern humans apart from our ancestors,” says first author Dr. Xiang-Chun Ju of the Human Evolutionary Genomics Unit at OIST.