Interesting-Links

Researchers combined more than 16,000 soil samples with predictive models to map the global density of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal networks.

Google DeepMind’s roadmap treats future AI agents as operational actors that may need containment, monitoring, and layered controls, borrowing ideas from cybersecurity and safety engineering.

AgentSociety proposes a framework where autonomous agents cooperate through mechanisms borrowed from social choice theory and liquid democracy. Agents delegate authority, route information, and form consensus-based decision paths using only local knowledge and incentive-compatible behaviour.

Bumblebees can use tools to solve a problem, according to experiments that demonstrate their remarkably advanced cognitive abilities. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/04/bees-use-tools-to-solve-problems-study-finds

This is biomimicry by a plant, and it just shows that nothing humans create will come close to the rich and bizarre natural world.

Researchers demonstrated a lightweight navigation system inspired by honeybee learning flights that allows small drones to return home using compact visual memories rather than large-scale mapping systems.

The consortium demonstrated distributed telecom routing methods based on pheromone-style path reinforcement and stigmergy. The work is notable because it applies swarm coordination principles directly to resilient communications infrastructure, where decentralized adaptation can improve network recovery under congestion or outages.

The advanced capabilities of AI-based navigation in military drones mean they will no longer require human training. They will rely on near-instantaneous sensor data from cameras, LiDAR, and radar to identify obstacles that will inform their future navigation, such as mountains, structures, and other aircraft.

A new industry commentary argues that swarm robotics is transitioning from controlled demonstrations into real operational deployment across defence and industrial environments.

While the new AI companies have focussed on LLMs, Google has been spinning off projects from Demis Hassabis’ DeepMind, in AlphaGo, AlphaEvolve, and the Noble prize-winning AlphaFold.