Xenobots — Robots Made Of Living Cells —Had A “Hello World” Moment

The African Clawed Frog and the Iron Laws of Technological Innovation

The African Clawed Frog, the species used to invent xenobots. On a side note, we humans, with all the fun confusion we get from our sexual diversification, have only two sex chromosomes. These frogs have *four* chromosomes. Just imagine the possibilities of gender identification. Vive la différence, indeed! (Phys.org)

“Eureka!” said the microbiologist

What do you get when you give a molecular biologist (with entirely too much time on his hands) access to a supercomputer, AI programming, embryonic genetic material from a frog, and sufficient funding? No, you don’t get this guy. Instead, you get something much scarier:

This is Xenopus laevis, an organism designed by an Artificial Intelligence. Click the link to see them dancing the “Hello World Hustle”. For those unfamiliar with the term, “Hello World” refers to what has become for most new coders the traditional results of their very first program. (NY Times)

What’s so special about those little specks in the image above? Those are “xenobots”, robots made entirely of living organic material. There are no wires, no circuit boards, no batteries. They can’t do much right now other than feed, move, and strive to survive, but they are alive. As with so many other great advances in technology, like Ben Franklin flying a kite in a thunderstorm, the Wright brothers’ first flight or Marie Curie’s fatal experiments with radium, the first successes of new tech are often not practical or profitable, but are only proofs-of-concept, demonstrations of viability, the barest hints of vast and unknowable future potential.