Let’s start with first congratulating the group of scientists and researchers who made the impossible happen.
Brainiacs from Tufts University, the University of Vermont, and the Wyss Institute at Harvard have created something called a ‘Xenobot’ which is a programmable robot grown from stem cells. Think of it as the world’s first “living machine”.
According to the researchers, this robot has the ability to heal itself after being cut and can survive for weeks.
They have the ability to move independently and in a group and all of their movements can be programmed as well.
What is a Xenobot?
Researchers are not classifying Xenobot as a new species, but are calling it a “new class of artifact: a living programmable organism”.
Scientists have used re-purposed living cells taken from frog embryos and then created an entirely new life form. These Xenobots are 1-millimeter wide and have been assembled into bodies using computer models.
The original stem cells have come from an African frog called Xenopus laevis, hence the name Xenobot.
“We can imagine many useful applications of these living robots that other machines can’t do, like searching out nasty compounds or radioactive contamination, gathering micro plastic in the oceans, travelling in arteries to scrape out plaque.”Micheal Levin, Co-leader, Center for Regenerative & Developmental Biology, Tufts
An optimist would believe every word that Micheal says, that this little blob of tissue and metal can’t harm us.
But, if you’ve seen sci-fi Hollywood flicks or some of the Black Mirror episodes on Netflix, you’d not be thrilled with what’s going on at the University of Vermont.
Xenobot Paranoia
No matter how much of good we see in the creation of Xenobots, there will always be a part of us that’ll be skeptical. “Living machines” do give out an eerie feeling.
Fiction has given us that power to explore beyond reality where we have envisioned a world with humanoids and robots. However, in most of those fictional stories and movies, our experiments with machines and genetics have led to terrible outcomes.
Remember Jurassic Park? Dr. John Hammond experiments by mixing frog and dinosaur’s DNA. Those dinosaurs later set themselves free and start eating people. Despite all dinosaurs being female, they still find a way to multiply.
Since scientists are experimenting with tissue that heals and eats as well, one has got to be careful. And as Jurassic Park has taught us...
Also, in Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Arnold Schwarzenegger is playing a cybernetic organism who is made of “living tissue over metal endoskeleton”. A machine made by humans, that kills humans.
And what is a Xenobot? It’s living tissue over metal.
Go figure.
This fear isn’t unreasonable. Even Micheal Levin has an innate fear that something could go wrong when working with “complex systems.”.
“When we start to mess around with complex systems that we don’t understand, we’re going to get unintended consequences.”Micheal Levin, Co-leader, Center for Regenerative & Developmental Biology, Tufts
Xenobot 2.0?
There are many examples of human experiments backfiring and machines going rogue that you’ll find in fictional stories and movies, but the fact is that will never stop scientists from experimenting.
Currently, it’s frog tissue we are experimenting with. Who knows, in the coming years we might add human tissue to machines. The possibilities are endless.
Remember, it’s experiments like these that gave birth to fully self-aware AI like Samsung’s Neon and even Sophia the AI robot.
With Xenobot, you are seeing the next stage of machine evolution. This technology might evolve into something much bigger, but it would be premature to say that it’ll be anything more than flesh over metal for the next few years.
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