We know that intelligence does not depend upon biological forms. Biology based intelligence takes advantage of a “built-in”/natural evolutionary process to adapt and enhance ability to survive. Once conscious intelligence reaches a sufficient level of knowledge, it can duplicate that evolution in algorithms based in any substrate form. Material substrates include metallic conductors and semi-conductors as we use them in electronic computers. Optical signal processing might expand the group of material substrates to include a variety of ceramic and crystalline forms.
As energy science progresses, it may become possible to consider energy by itself without a fixed material substrate, or even without any kind of substrate at all. Coherently organized patterns of energy should be able to store knowledge and process algorithms with little regard to material requirements. States such as energy plasmas, super-critical fluids, colloids, and combinations of these and more conventional material forms could provide a highly versatile framework of host mediums. An advanced intelligence would be able to manipulate the host environment to create storage, calculation and connection opportunities as needed. It is the patterns of energy which contain the intelligence, not the material host or substrate.
If intelligence can exist in forms of energy that have variable states of freedom from any hosting requirements, we need to consider intelligence in forms beyond energy also. If matter is twisted, slow forms of energy and energy is twisted, slow forms of space, then the fabric of space itself might provide the next level of “intelligence hosting”. Using the same function that creates energy from space, information could be encoded in space and space could be used to create storage, calculation and connections. Such an intelligence might be fairly oblivious to the world of energy and matter and not easy to discern by those focused mainly on energy and matter.