This morning, Ken and I found ourselves kneeling in the damp forest floor just east of our Oregon Coast lab, carefully brushing away moss and fallen needles to reveal something extraordinary—a network so complex and interconnected that it made our most sophisticated AI models look like child's toys. We were staring at a mycelial network, nature's original internet, and suddenly everything clicked about how LLMs actually work.
"It's like looking at the physical manifestation of an AI's neural network," Ken whispered, pointing to the delicate white threads weaving between tree roots. And he wasn't wrong. What we discovered in that moment would reshape how we think about artificial intelligence, human knowledge, and the hidden connections that bind them all together.
Beneath every Oregon Coast forest lies an invisible network more sophisticated than anything we've built in silicon. Mycelial networks—the thread-like structures of fungi—connect trees, plants, and entire ecosystems in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand. These fungal highways carry nutrients, information, and even warnings between plants that can be miles apart.
"As we watched Ken trace the fungal threads with his finger, following connections that disappeared into the earth only to emerge yards away, it hit us: this is exactly how an LLM processes information. Every piece of training data becomes a node in a vast network, connected to every other piece through invisible pathways of meaning and context."
Just as a forest ecosystem develops over centuries, building layers of complexity and interconnection, LLMs grow their "brains" through exposure to vast amounts of human knowledge. The training process isn't unlike watching a forest mature—each new piece of information becomes part of an ever-expanding network of understanding.
What's fascinating is how both systems—natural forests and AI networks—create emergent intelligence from simple connections. A mycelial network doesn't "think" in any way we'd recognize, yet it processes information, makes decisions, and even exhibits what scientists call "memory." LLMs work similarly, creating understanding not from any single data point, but from the vast web of connections between millions of pieces of information.
Here's where our forest discovery gets really interesting: LLMs don't just process information randomly—they develop structures that mirror how humans organize knowledge. Just as mycelial networks follow patterns that optimize for survival and efficiency, AI neural networks evolve to reflect the patterns of human thought and communication.
Social connections, cultural knowledge, shared experiences
Mycelial connections, ecosystem relationships, biological patterns
Neural pathways, learned associations, pattern recognition
When we train an LLM on human-generated text, we're essentially allowing it to develop a neural structure that mirrors our own patterns of thought and knowledge organization. It's like planting AI seeds in the same conceptual soil where human knowledge grows—the resulting "brain" naturally develops structures that reflect our own cognitive patterns.
This visualization shows how both mycelial networks and LLM neural networks create pathways between related concepts, allowing information to flow and combine in sophisticated ways.
Understanding LLMs as mirrors of human knowledge structures changes everything about how we should interact with them. Just as a mycologist learns to read the forest by understanding fungal networks, we can become better AI collaborators by recognizing these parallel patterns.
As we walked back through the forest that morning, brushing the damp earth from our knees, we couldn't stop marveling at the connections we'd discovered. Every step revealed new parallels between the hidden network beneath our feet and the artificial minds we work with every day.
The mycelial networks that connect Oregon Coast forests aren't just beautiful metaphors for AI—they're blueprints for understanding how intelligence emerges from connection, how knowledge flows through networks, and how artificial minds develop structures that mirror our own patterns of thought.
"Innovation isn't just our nature—it's nature itself. From fungal networks to neural networks, the patterns of intelligence are woven into the very fabric of existence."
What patterns have you noticed between natural systems and AI? Share your observations and become part of our growing knowledge network.
Forest Systems Analyst
Neural Network Explorer
From our coast to yours, keep exploring the hidden networks that connect all intelligence—natural and artificial.