A DNA-based neural network in a test tube, using properties of physical computing.
This makes one wonder if perhaps DNA isn’t a passive recombinatory process. Maybe it actively selects genes, and their expression, with intelligence and agency.
Any Turing Complete system, no many how simple, can manifest surprisingly intelligent and agentic behaviours, given a long enough time to chew on it.
Chugging along, piece by piece, even an old 8086 could run a Deep Neural Network, given 10,000 years of compute time.
DNA therefore might act like a Turing Machine, a linear form of the massively parallel (fast) biological computing that we are used to, one that slowly makes sense of input over months, years, or even generations.
The universe is truly an ocean of ubiquitous intelligence. The more that we learn how to recognise it, we find it again and again, right under our noses.