Ventner's "artificial bacterium" is simply a natural bacterium with synthetic DNA, and the DNA sequence is chosen by picking your favorite selection of gene sequences from Nature. I do not regard it as "artificial life" at all. It is a bit like, if you wrote some masterpiece book, then I cut out some pages with scissors and rearrange them and declared that (therefore) I had written a book. It's good if Ventner et al can develop the technology to do this, and custom made to order bacteria might become very useful and important, but it is hardly "creating life." Now if, say, we had a robotic factory that builds more robots, and the robots also perform all the mining to get the materials, maintenance on the factory etc... then I would say we had genuinely "created life." And this kind of "life" could in principle be far superior to the old wetware kind in various ways, such as ability to live on the moon, no need for water, much greater adaptability to changing environment, far longer lifespan, superior ability to play chess, etc. I would imagine, in fact, that this kind of life will be the important kind sufficiently far in the future, from the point of view of the galaxy. We won't be. And the research into ConwayLife, 3D printers, and AI, all just are preliminary steps to creating this.
On 5/17/2015 10:04 AM, Warren D Smith wrote:
Ventner's "artificial bacterium" is simply a natural bacterium with synthetic DNA, and the DNA sequence is chosen by picking your favorite selection of gene sequences from Nature.
I do not regard it as "artificial life" at all.
It is a bit like, if you wrote some masterpiece book, then I cut out some pages with scissors and rearrange them and declared that (therefore) I had written a book. It's good if Ventner et al can develop the technology to do this, and custom made to order bacteria might become very useful and important, but it is hardly "creating life."
Now if, say, we had a robotic factory that builds more robots, and the robots also perform all the mining to get the materials, maintenance on the factory etc...
Life is always relative to some environment. We're alive, but we don't do photosynthesis; we depend on plants to create organic compounds for us. And the plants depend on the Earth's environment and light from the Sun. So can can conceive of robotic life that reproduces by scavenging electronic components from machines we discard. I have a friend who says cigarettes are a life-form parasitic on human beings.
then I would say we had genuinely "created life." And this kind of "life" could in principle be far superior to the old wetware kind in various ways, such as ability to live on the moon, no need for water, much greater adaptability to changing environment, far longer lifespan, superior ability to play chess, etc. I would imagine, in fact, that this kind of life will be the important kind sufficiently far in the future, from the point of view of the galaxy. We won't be.
I'd say the essential aspect of life is the drive to reproduce and the ability to evolve. If robots instantiate those two attributes, then they will be just another life form. They can evolve to be social and smart, but it's an interesting question whether being smart in the sense of playing chess or proving theorems is an evolutionary advantage. Empirical data suggests maybe not. Brent
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