The Agentic OS Within: How AI Mirrors the Human Body

How does the human brain compare to AI when it comes to processing power and energy consumption? Can AI really mirror the intricate feedback loops and adaptability found in the body’s systems? What happens when we compare human memory with AI’s ability to store and retrieve information? How do both the brain and AI learn from mistakes, adapting over time to improve decision-making? Can AI ever match the body’s self-healing mechanisms, like the immune system or neural plasticity? We dive deep into these questions, uncovering how AI and the human body are more alike than you might think, all the way from memory storage to resilience. It brings up the question: did we model AI after ourselves because humans are so advanced or does it reflect a limitation in our brain's creativity/design-creation?

Author

Ross Green
April 08, 2025

Table of Contents

Introduction

The human body is a highly sophisticated system, where the brain serves as the central processor and the body’s organs act as its hardware components, working in harmony to process information, make decisions, and respond to stimuli. Similarly, artificial intelligence operates as an integrated system that mirrors this complexity. Just as the body’s systems constantly process data to maintain balance and adapt to change, AI agents use algorithms and decision-making models to emulate human cognition. This parallel between the human body and AI is the foundation of the concept of embodied intelligence, where the physical body acts not only as a vessel for consciousness but also as an intricate, self-regulating computing system.

In medicine, this analogy deepens. Much like how medical professionals rely on an understanding of the body’s interconnected systems to make diagnoses and decisions, AI engineers must understand the computer systems that function through continuous data processing, feedback loops, and autonomous action.

As such, the "Agentic Operating System" (Agentic OS) represents a similar ecosystem of AI agents that seamlessly operate across various departments, autonomously bridging gaps and acting as an AI employee. Key to the OS’ effectiveness are short-term memory, enhanced autonomy, and a user-friendly interface, features that make it intuitive and efficient, much like the body’s ability to adapt and self-regulate. (CAiS believes one means for future autonomy can lie using principles seen here).

In the following sections, we will explore the parallels between the human body and AI in greater detail. We'll dive into the body’s role as an Agentic OS, how memory functions in both humans and AI, how literal human anatomy correlates with AI “anatomy,” and how self-healing systems in the body mirror the adaptability of AI. Together, these insights will reveal how, in many ways, both the human body and AI are examples of the original “Agentic OS.”

Read on for this and much more! The sections build upon each other, particularly on how the human brain is similar to deep AI learning, so reading start to finish, if possible, is advised…

1.0 — Embodied Intelligence

As we step into a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and agentic systems, it’s easy to forget that the original model for complex, adaptive, and intelligent behavior has been within us all along. The human body is perhaps the most intricate and time-tested example of an agentic operating system where countless autonomous processes work in tandem to keep the whole functioning.

In this section, we explore this analogy from two angles: first, by looking at the body itself as a living, breathing multi-agent system; and second, by examining how modern medicine is evolving to operate like an OS, from diagnosing, optimizing, and intervening through layers of increasingly autonomous agents.

Ross Green, MD. (2025) “The CPU and Human Mapping Comparison.” Canva.com.

1.1 - The Body as The Agentic OS

The human body is more than a collection of biological parts since it's a living system of interdependent “agents.” Each organ, cell, and signal contributes…Read more here.

1.2 - Medicine’s OS: From Diagnosis to Decision

As the body becomes increasingly “legible” (in the tech sense) to machines, the practice of medicine is transforming into a layered, software-like operating system…Read more here.

2.0 — The Memory Matrix

If the body is an agentic operating system, memory is its persistent state. In other words, recollection is the ongoing dialogue between past and present that informs every decision. Whether biological or artificial, intelligence is shaped not just by the ability to sense or act, but by what is remembered, how it's stored, and when it’s retrieved.

In this section, we explore the architecture of memory in both humans and AI systems. What does it mean to "remember" in a neural net? How do hidden layers in transformers mirror our own layered cognition? And how do both humans and machines evolve through feedback—learning not just from what works, but from what fails? See more below…

Ross Green, MD (2025). “The Memory Matrix.” Canva.com

2.1 — Human vs AI Memory: What’s Really Stored?

At a glance, memory feels like a simple concept. However, under the hood, human memory is a layered, complex architecture with distinct subsystems that serve different functions, and remarkably, the same is becoming true for artificial intelligence…read more here.

Ross Green, MD (2025). “Human Vs. AI Memory: The Basics.” Canva.com

2.2 -- Hidden Layers, Hidden Thoughts

One of the most fascinating, and unsettling, aspects of modern AI is how opaque its thinking can be. Just like we don't fully understand the unconscious mechanisms behind our own thoughts, we also struggle to decipher the inner workings of deep neural networks. The similarity is more than metaphorical…read more here.

mraptor. (2020, May 21). Mini, macro and cortical column? [Online forum post]. HTM Forum. https://discourse.numenta.org/t/mini-macro-and-cortical-column/7575. Access by Ross Green, MD, March 31, 2025.

2.3 — Learning Through Feedback (and Mistakes)

Learning doesn’t happen in a vacuum. For both humans and AI, growth comes through interaction with the environment—trying, failing, adjusting, and repeating. In this sense, error isn’t a bug; it’s a necessary part of the loop…read more here.

Sapien Labs. (2018, August 26). Stimulation, sensation and localization in the cortex. Sapien Labs. https://sapienlabs.org/lab-talk/stimulation-sensation-localization-cortex/

3.0 — By the Anatomy, How Humans Are Like the Agentic OS

Topic

Human System Equivalent (Brain neural network)

The Agentic OS (Billions of parameters in LLMs)

7±2 chunks in working memory (source)

Cognitive limitation

Context window (tokens in active memory)

Procedural memory (ride a bike)

Muscle memory

Reinforcement-learned agents

Immune response time (hours–days)

Adaptive feedback loop

Agentic retraining from edge case feedback

Synaptic plasticity

Learning from experience

Gradient descent, fine-tuning

70% of brain is hidden layer processing

Subconscious thinking

Hidden layers in transformers

Pulse regulation (60–100 bpm at rest)

Autonomic Nervous System Input + Cardiac Pacemaker

System clock / event loop timing

Vascular autoregulation

Autonomic Nervous System for Blood flow optimization

Resource allocation algorithms

Pulmonary gas exchange

Autonomic Nervous System Oxygen/CO₂ balance

Input/output balancing + real-time optimization

Glomerular filtration rate (GFR)

Kidney filtering & toxin removal (starling forces!)

Garbage collection / memory pruning in runtime

Hormone signaling (e.g. insulin, cortisol)

Endocrine system

Background agents setting global system parameters

Paracrine signaling (cell-to-cell feedback)

Local cell communication

Microservices/local agent messaging

Hypothalamic control of homeostasis

Temperature, hunger, circadian rhythms

System regulation daemon (e.g., watchdog agent)

Reticular activating system (RAS)

Wakefulness / alertness modulation

Attention mechanism in transformers

Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis response to stress

Stress response cascade

Emergency subroutines / high-priority interrupt calls

White blood cells tracking pathogens

Pattern recognition + anomaly detection

Intrusion detection agents

Clotting cascade

Proteins that activate other proteins top cause clotting

Failover protocols and rollback agents

Neural lateral inhibition

Sensory sharpening

Signal contrast enhancement algorithms

Muscle spindle feedback

Motion calibration

Self-correcting feedback loops in robotics

Myelin sheath neural propagation (CNS + PNS)

Faster signal propagation via nodes of Ranvier

Low-latency model optimization (e.g., quantization)

4.0 — Quick Hit:

Ross Green, MD (2025). “Humans and AI Heal Themselves” Canva.com

Our nervous system is a paradox of resilience and limitation. The central nervous system (CNS), consisting of the brain and spinal cord, has historically been considered poor at healing. Damage here, such as from a stroke or spinal cord injury, often leads to long-term deficits. In contrast, the peripheral nervous system (PNS), which are the nerves branching out to limbs and organs, can regenerate to a surprising degree, slowly rebuilding damaged axons over time.

But the real magic is in its neuroplasticity…Read more here.

Conclusion

The parallels between the human body and artificial intelligence reveal a fascinating symmetry, with both systems functioning as complex, interconnected networks that process information, adapt to change, and maintain balance. The human body, with its intricate systems and feedback loops, serves as a powerful metaphor for AI’s potential to operate autonomously across various departments, much like the "Agentic Operating System." As we continue to explore these connections, whether through the body’s memory systems, self-healing mechanisms, or the autonomous decision-making of AI, we see that both the human body and AI are (or should be) continuously learning, adapting, and evolving. Ultimately, the Agentic OS represents not just a technological advancement, but a vision for the future where AI acts as an intelligent, adaptable force that mirrors the resilience and sophistication of human biology.

Some food for thought (and hopefully, progress): Did we model AI after ourselves because human cognition is the limit of what we can understand? Or is the human body so remarkable that it’s truly worth replicating? Or is it both?

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