Living Materials and Objects I have a question for you, when is something alive? This is not as easy a question to answer as one might think. The reason I asked this question is scientists have created something which might be one of the things we cannot define as far as life goes. They have invented a material which is capable of metabolism, and can move. It can also assemble itself and organize. Does any of this sound familiar? It should because these are traits of life. Some things such as self-assembly are beyond what we can do with our bodies without the help of surgeons. Have the scientists created a living organism? This is what they had to say about the material. “We are introducing a brand-new, lifelike material concept powered by its very own artificial metabolism. We are not making something that’s alive, but we are creating materials that are much more lifelike than have ever been seen before.” Scientists don’t think the material is alive even though it demonstrates many life-like features. This is just one of those things that seems puzzling. It is reminiscent of the argument about when and how will we know when artificial intelligence becomes alive or sentient. It is all very tricky. The problem will only intensify as years go by and more advancements are made in artificial intelligence. Is it an important question? I think it may become very important, because living things should have certain rights, but if they are not alive and only seem alive to us, they are just machines. DNA is the basis of life and apparently DNA was used in the construction of the new material. The scientists grew more DNA. When they were finished they had something which could move. It was said the material moved in a similar manner to slime molds. Some scientists have talked about combining the new material with robotics. This would make robots a lot more life-like and maybe enable them to move more like we do, making them harder to detect from humans. The first question I have to ask is do we want robots or androids which look and act so human we might think they were human? Some people will not want this. Personally, I don’t know how I feel about it yet. I don’t think I would want to be talking to an android thinking it was a human, but I am not entirely sure. There has been a lot of talk about making space travel safer for us by using androids in our ships instead of humans. The idea is to let them explore the universe for us. This seems to me to be taking away a natural desire many humans have. It just would not be the same to have androids exploring the universe in our place. They could augment the crew and perhaps be sent out on landing missions where the conditions are too dangerous for humans, but would the crew feel sorry for them if they seemed overly human? There is a chance this could happen. We humans tend to get very fond of things and an android could make us feel that way. Scientists are working on ways to make this material even more life-like and improve its biological functions. It does make me wonder since the material is controlled by artificial intelligence could it make decisions on its own someday. I can see it now, an android covered with skin made from this stuff gets into a dangerous situation and its skin decides to save itself by leaving. This is really a bizarre thought and I am sure the skin would be controlled by the android brain in that case, but it does make one wonder. Scientists have said their goal is not to create life, but could it happen by accident? Many scientific experiments have produced objects by accident in the past. Let’s look into some of these things. The microwave oven was created from an accident. An engineer was working on a radar tube when he noticed a chocolate bar in his pocket melted. Apparently microwaves melted it and he realized they could be used to cook items. X-Rays were discovered by accident when a scientist was working with a cathode ray tube. As he was working with the tube it made a fluorescent screen glow. He placed his hand in front of the screen and immediately the bones in his hand were visible and thus the X-Ray machine was invented. Even the pacemaker was invented by accident along with many other devices from important medical ones to household devices such as Velcro. This indicated to me, you never know what might happen when scientists are fooling around with things that resemble life. They just might stumble on to the creation of life itself. We are learning more about the human body every day and as we learn, we are using what we learn to create other things. Before we knew about DNA, the material I told you about could not have been created. Are there other discoveries waiting for us which will enable us to create organisms which will be so life-like we will have no way to know if they are living or not? It could turn out we might be able to even create human life. Some might say this is blasphemy, but it couldn’t happen without God allowing it. Would the type of life we created make any difference if it all was sentient? Whether we had an android which was sentient or a human body which was sentient, wouldn’t they both be entitled to the rights all sentient beings must have? There is another side to this coin. There is work going on where humans are having their DNA modified. Much of it is unsanctioned and there are harsh punishments for it, but that is not the point I am trying to make. I am wondering if this type of work could take away a human’s ability to function as a human and turn him or her basically into a robot to be controlled. There are some powers on this planet who might want to do this. For example, they might want to create soldiers who obey all commands without thinking and who feel no pain. There is always the danger of the military seeing this might be possible and want to try it out on people. We are living in strange times and things are coming which were unimaginable just a few years ago. Will they be for our good, or will they harm the human race? I would hope some type of controls can be agreed upon by the nations of this earth.
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