Science and Technology
Societal Implications of Xenobots
The creation of synthetic life forms housing living robots designed by humans raises intriguing questions about its implications for society.
This isn’t just another piece about technology or science; instead, it marks an unprecedented leap in our history, raising ethical and regulatory considerations.
Thoughtfully, the creation of Computer Designed Organisms holds immense importance for humanity, urging society to unite in establishing a shared stance to address imminent risks.
You might ask why xenobots are critical to know and why they differ from other types of robots. The short answer is they are first-of-a-kind programmable life forms known as bio-bots. So, they are not mechanical machines made up of lifeless materials. Instead, they are made up of actual living cells.
These are the most miniature robots measuring smaller than a millimeter. Xenobots are biological machines made up of living organisms. The exhilarating concept of technology is they are created by humans but designed by machines.
The concept of xenobots is more innovative than previous robotics because artificial intelligence technology so far has not used biology to create robots. The idea and prototypes were created by researchers at the University of Vermont in Canada and Tufts University in the United States. I attached the published paper in the reference section.
I am pleased that my recent article discussing my concerns about artificial superintelligence gained significant exposure on social media. Some perceptive readers asked my thoughts about xenobots and whether I could articulate the progress in simple terms with its implications for society. The request was music to my ear as I have a strong interest in biotechnology, AI, and robotics, recently, Computer Designed Organisms.
So the purpose of this post is to introduce this innovative yet scary concept in the most uncomplicated description without using scientific or technical jargon.
However, my aim is not to scare my readers but inform them so that they can follow future developments in Computer Designed Organisms leveraging the knowledge we gain from xenobots. I have no issues with xenobots from technological and scientific perspectives. The concerns relate to ethical considerations.
The cells for xenobots are derived from the embryos of a type of frog called Xenopus Laevis, where the name comes from. They currently use only the skin and heart stem cells of these frogs.
After creating the blueprint with algorithms, they collected data and entered the datasets into a supercomputer. The algorithms make various configurations using the datasets.
The supercomputer they use can run millions of simulations in a minute. They use these configurations to test the planned outcomes, such as moving these tiny robots from one location to another.
Another critical examination in the project is to test their fitness and survival rates. Interestingly when xenobots are inserted with more stem cells, they can reproduce and continue living.
The fittest ones survived to the planned next stage in the configuration. After these tests, they created digital models and found a way to choose the fittest ones.
It takes approximately 5,000 living skin cells to create these tiny robots. These biorobots can be created only with the use of a microscope. Researchers use microsurgery to create these biobots. Their creation is time-consuming and complex. Just creating one entity takes hours as they make it cell by cell.
When I read about the progress last year, initially, these biobots lived only ten days. However, when researchers cut them recently, these biobots healed themselves without intervention. They started self-organizing and turning to their normal form a few minutes after they were cut.
Even though our knowledge of stem cells is still limited, these biobots give us some insights into the mechanisms and integration of living cells. The challenge is demystifying the signals created by natural cells.
So, if researchers learn to decode these signals, they can create biodegradable entities. When we can create bio-compatible objects, humanity can gain a new capability of controlling human anatomy.
As a current capability, the purpose of these tiny robots is to understand the life form giving us clues on how life starts from scratch and how it manifests for living. In addition, however, researchers speculate on some big solutions using xenobots.
One of the use cases is using them to remove microplastics and radioactive materials from the contaminated seas. For example, they could either consume them or create more extensive versions of micro-plastic to be collected by machinery robots.
This can have a tremendous positive impact on the environment and sustainability. We know that plastics and radioactive materials are toxic to the environment. However, to make them useful for these environmental goals, they need to be scaled up in magnitudes and developed with other tools such as 3-D printers.
A more exciting and controversial use case is to create a new type of medicine for deadly diseases. Researchers speculate that these biobots can detect cancer cells, clean calcium plaques in blood vessels, and perform targeted drug delivery in organs.
So, the ultimate goal is to repair damaged organs. In my opinion, the most promising and desired use cases are in regenerative medicine, such as repairing organs or creating new organs from cells that can be inserted into the human body. Robotics will need to collaborate with bioengineering to achieve these goals. Researchers also think xenobots can be used for vaccine creation.
Currently, these biobots are primitive. They are restricted in their abilities. Besides, a more futuristic plan by the researchers is to create even more sophisticated systems such as blood vessels, productive organs, and even the nervous system. When these biological and anatomical systems are designed, these biobots will not be machines anymore.
These developments, of course, open many ethical concerns. The good news is that the researchers are willing to publicly discuss these concerns and consider them in their projects.
Artificial consciousness is a new concept hitting the technology and ethics literature. Our knowledge is nothing more than speculation at this stage. However, these types of innovative initiatives make us think and even concern some of us. The future looks both exciting and concerning.
Of course, bio-technologists have already intervened in the evolution of some crops and animals to expedite the mutations. But now we are talking about artificial intelligence taking control of the evolution process. So, AI will play a critical role in the design and manipulation of these robots.
More specifically, the supercomputers work so fast to make an assessment through intelligent simulations that the evolution of life forms takes only days compared to real evolution in nature, which takes thousands and even millions of years through multiple mutations. So, my point is computers will make the natural selection for evolution.
Currently, the challenge is to find the exact shapes of living forms through computer simulations. Therefore, researchers have to achieve this goal manually.
At this stage, xenobots can perform very basic tasks. For example, they can move in a straight line, collaborate with each other, and carry microscopic objects from one location to another. However, the exciting part, which was not the original design, was these organisms cleaned tinier organisms in their circles while moving. Researchers don’t have an explanation for this spinoff yet. They believe they have memories that are yet to be explored.
Currently, they are allowed to use the stem cells of a frog. However, some researchers think using human cells can create more sophisticated solutions because the human immune system might not attack the native cells. So, the immune system might not remove them from the body. But, again, this is where ethics and regulations play a critical role.
Researchers come up with different innovative ideas; for example, in addition to the above-mentioned radical thoughts, artificial intelligence’s ability to design the life form for unknown shapes. As we know, in classical robotics, humans use their biases, such as giving robots familiar shapes such as a human face or animal body. However, when computers design bio-robots, we might have totally new forms of robots. This idea itself is another innovation for humanity.
So, the central ethical concern is synthetic evolution which humanity has no experience with yet. We might lose control if we create autonomous machines that can create life forms using artificial evolution. This is not a trivial matter for the future of humanity.
Moreover, Computer Designed Organisms are a new concept. Currently, only a few credible research scientists are working on them. However, if this goes to the hands of ill-intentioned biologists and technologists, they can program super AI machines to weaponize them against humanity. This misuse must be carefully considered by regulators and ethics committees in all countries.
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Reference
A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms authored by Sam Kriegman, Douglas Blackiston, Michael Levin, and Josh Bongard, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)\
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