Also I think something very similar happened in the 3 Body Problem trilogy at some point
Trisolarians apparently at some point formed a computer out of the members of their species in order to try to predict the Chaotic Eras, it was presented as experiment to the humans in trisolarian VR game, that was very close to the beginning of the book.
There's a great scifi book that has a computer that's run on ants as logic gates. It's slow as fuck but has enough processing power to run an AI.
Children of Time?
Yea it’s this one. The evolved spider people used them in their equivalent of information age
Also I think something very similar happened in the 3 Body Problem trilogy at some point
Trisolarians apparently at some point formed a computer out of the members of their species in order to try to predict the Chaotic Eras, it was presented as experiment to the humans in trisolarian VR game, that was very close to the beginning of the book.