Scientists Create 'Xenobots' -- Virtual Creatures Brought to Life (nytimes.com) 35
"If the last few decades of progress in artificial intelligence and in molecular biology hooked up, their love child — a class of life unlike anything that has ever lived — might resemble the dark specks doing lazy laps around a petri dish in a laboratory at Tufts University."
The New York Times reports on a mind-boggling living machine that's programmable -- and biodegradable. Strictly speaking, these life-forms do not have sex organs — or stomachs, brains or nervous systems. The one under the microscope consisted of about 2,000 living skin cells taken from a frog embryo. Bigger specimens, albeit still smaller than a millimeter-wide poppy seed, have skin cells and heart muscle cells that will begin pulsating by the end of the day. These are all programmable organisms called xenobots, the creation of which was revealed in a scientific paper in January...
A xenobot lives for only about a week, feeding on the small platelets of yolk that fill each of its cells and would normally fuel embryonic development. Because its building blocks are living cells, the entity can heal from injury, even after being torn almost in half. But what it does during its short life is decreed not by the ineffable frogginess etched into its DNA — which has not been genetically modified — but by its physical shape. And xenobots come in many shapes, all designed by roboticists in computer simulations, using physics engines similar to those in video games like Fortnite and Minecraft...
All of which makes xenobots amazing and maybe slightly unsettling — golems dreamed in silicon and then written into flesh. The implications of their existence could spill from artificial-intelligence research to fundamental questions in biology and ethics. "We are witnessing almost the birth of a new discipline of synthetic organisms," said Hod Lipson, a roboticist at the Columbia University who was not part of the research team. "I don't know if that's robotics, or zoology or something else."
An algorithm running for about 24 hours iterated through possible body shapes, after which the the two researchers tried "to sculpt cellular figurines that resembled those designs." They're now considering how the process might be automated with 3-D cell printers, and the Times ponders other future possibilities the researchers have hinted at for their Xenobots. ("Sweep up ocean microplastics into a larger, collectible ball? Deliver drugs to a specific tumor? Scrape plaque from the walls of our arteries?")
Sharing the Times' story on Twitter, Vint Cerf summed it up with just three words> .
"This is weird."
The New York Times reports on a mind-boggling living machine that's programmable -- and biodegradable. Strictly speaking, these life-forms do not have sex organs — or stomachs, brains or nervous systems. The one under the microscope consisted of about 2,000 living skin cells taken from a frog embryo. Bigger specimens, albeit still smaller than a millimeter-wide poppy seed, have skin cells and heart muscle cells that will begin pulsating by the end of the day. These are all programmable organisms called xenobots, the creation of which was revealed in a scientific paper in January...
A xenobot lives for only about a week, feeding on the small platelets of yolk that fill each of its cells and would normally fuel embryonic development. Because its building blocks are living cells, the entity can heal from injury, even after being torn almost in half. But what it does during its short life is decreed not by the ineffable frogginess etched into its DNA — which has not been genetically modified — but by its physical shape. And xenobots come in many shapes, all designed by roboticists in computer simulations, using physics engines similar to those in video games like Fortnite and Minecraft...
All of which makes xenobots amazing and maybe slightly unsettling — golems dreamed in silicon and then written into flesh. The implications of their existence could spill from artificial-intelligence research to fundamental questions in biology and ethics. "We are witnessing almost the birth of a new discipline of synthetic organisms," said Hod Lipson, a roboticist at the Columbia University who was not part of the research team. "I don't know if that's robotics, or zoology or something else."
An algorithm running for about 24 hours iterated through possible body shapes, after which the the two researchers tried "to sculpt cellular figurines that resembled those designs." They're now considering how the process might be automated with 3-D cell printers, and the Times ponders other future possibilities the researchers have hinted at for their Xenobots. ("Sweep up ocean microplastics into a larger, collectible ball? Deliver drugs to a specific tumor? Scrape plaque from the walls of our arteries?")
Sharing the Times' story on Twitter, Vint Cerf summed it up with just three words> .
"This is weird."
They're "Alive" (Score:2)
In the same way a severed finger or surgically-removed thyroid could be considered alive, it sounds like.
Re: (Score:2)
They are starting with cells and just rearranging them, and the cells have the capability themselves to reconfigure into "heart" cells, "skin" cells, and all the rest. Rather like stem cells, its the biological equivalent of, "Oh, just paste this big block of code anywhere, it will reconfigure itself to be an accounting app, a TCP/IP stack, an IDE, a database engine, whatever you happen to need, which it figures out from the context it's pasted into."
All the significant Design here happened well before the
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But what it does during its short life is decreed not by the ineffable frogginess etched into its DNA — which has not been genetically modified — but by its physical shape.
Hope things are well there in your coward world, illiterate meat.
Zoobotics (Score:2)
That something else will inevitably be "Zoobotics."
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If you mix it with Jurrasic Park, do you get Dinobots?
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God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man, man destroys God. Man creates AI, AI creates cybernetic xenobot Dinobots. Xenobots destroys man and most forms of life on Earth as we currently know it.
Women inherit the earth.
Re: Zoobotics (Score:1)
The first words that came to my mind were biobots and biobotics.
Obligatory quote (Score:5, Funny)
Scientists: "This is... this is magnificent."
Ian Malcolm: "Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming."
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She kept screaming: "Give it to me, Give it to me, I'm so WET!"
So i responded: "You can scream all you want, but I won't give you my umbrella"
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Must be great to be the only guy left with an umbrella...
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Yes... best done in a context where there is no divorce.
Been there (Score:1)
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I've seen this movie.... it doesn't end well for.. well... anyone, actually.
Well, true, for anyone not identified as a virus gender.
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Just make sure they can't synthesize an essential amino acid. WCPGW?
Eh, saw this already (Score:2)
In a preview demo of "Doom: Thy Flesh Recycled".
Sure (Score:1)
Their real goal is to give themselves a 12-inch wanker.
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Why would anyone want an irritating or annoying dwarf?
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Is that what your wife calls it?
"You're a failed attempt to divide by null." (Score:2)
Nice things to say to your child No. 37.
Fine, ok, no (Score:1)
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Didn't they used to sell these in comic book ads? (Score:2)
Food sources (Score:2)
"A xenobot lives for only about a week, feeding on the small platelets of yolk that fill each of its cells..." Until they learn how to feed off of something else, I guess. Sort of reminds me of Bill Cosby's "The Chicken Heart that ate up New York City" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE0hHEtkkQA) Well, except for the part where the Chicken Heart rang for the elevator...
But hey, what could go wrong?
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They're clusters of isolated organ cells, they can't "learn" anything at this point and they can't reproduce so they can't evolve into something that can eat either.
Horror Movie Remake (now as a Live Action) (Score:1)
So, what are they trying to create: The Blob [wikipedia.org], The Raft [wikipedia.org], The Stuff [wikipedia.org] or maybe some Phantoms [wikipedia.org]? :(
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I was thinking more like Rossum's Universal Robots or Bladerunner.
xenobots (Score:2)
thought the post was about some new anime...oh well back to watching the shield hero.
I am Sentient No.6..... (Score:2)
...I stand in line.
I am the prototype of a beign convenience for mankind
Superior is digital, human flesh so trivial
I hate that I can't see the one that made me
I am the new awakening of different eyes
My children you are my army
They are what we can never see and still despise
And their sky cried Mary
- Nevermore "Sentient Six"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Once again, life imitating art it would seem.