We once figured out ants can communicate and we had lot of ideas to instruct them to serve our purpose. but what we have is antman.

This is definitely a good start for sci-fi writers and I am hoping it doesn't just end there.

I dunno what a version 0.1 might usefully do, but on the more speculative horizon... a lot. biological systems are really good at making things.. they made you.

Evil, perhaps

bacteria carrying magnets could generate current could generate power?

The speed at which that cargo was moving makes me question whether this could ever be scaled up enough to generate a non-negligible amount of power, let alone enough to solve any particular power requirements we currently have.

What about power requirements we don't currently have? Ideas like these might become useful for building technology that interacts with building blocks of life in a different way than a bulk process (like lithography).

I don't think it's a failure of imagination on my part. It's just we already have a variety of technologies available that cover the low end of the power generation and using bacteria in this way would never compete with what is already out there.

That's not to say there isn't practical applications to this research. I just can't see power generation being one of them.