One giant leap

[McParadigm]

Scientists have created the world's first living, self-healing robots using stem cells from frogs.

Named xenobots after the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which they take their stem cells, the machines are less than a millimeter (0.04 inches) wide -- small enough to travel inside human bodies. They can walk and swim, survive for weeks without food, and work together in groups.

These are "entirely new life-forms," said the University of Vermont, which conducted the research with Tufts University.

The cells then began to work on their own -- skin cells bonded to form structure, while pulsing heart muscle cells allowed the robot to move on its own. Xenobots even have self-healing capabilities; when the scientists sliced into one robot, it healed by itself and kept moving.

"These are novel living machines," said Joshua Bongard, one of the lead researchers at the University of Vermont, in the news release. "They're neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal. It's a new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism."

The xenobots could potentially be used toward a host of tasks, according to the study, which was partially funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a federal agency that oversees the development of technology for military use.

Xenobots could be used to clean up radioactive waste, collect microplastics in the oceans, carry medicine inside human bodies, or even travel into our arteries to scrape out plaque. The xenobots can survive in aqueous environments without additional nutrients for days or weeks -- making them suitable for internal drug delivery.

Aside from these immediate practical tasks, the xenobots could also help researchers to learn more about cell biology -- opening the doors to future advancement in human health and longevity.

The organisms come pre-loaded with their own food source of lipid and protein deposits, allowing them to live for a little over a week -- but they can't reproduce or evolve. However, their lifespan can increase to several weeks in nutrient-rich environments.

And although the supercomputer -- a powerful piece of artificial intelligence -- plays a big role in building these robots, it's "unlikely" that the AI could have evil intentions.

[McParadigm]

Wow

When the xenobots moved around, the researchers could observe how their unique structures—both in their cells’ arrangement and the overall shape of the blob—mapped to behavior. They sent all this data to a team of computer scientists, who built a simulated environment for digital versions of the xenobots to play in. They then ran evolutionary algorithms, which in a sense replicate the processes of natural selection, to look at how a xenobot’s structure helps it, say, move forward. The system searches for possible manipulations of the xenobots’ designs and explores how these new designs might affect functionality. Xenobots that do well at a particular task in the simulation are deemed “fit,” and are bred with other high performers to create a new generation of “evolved” xenobots.

The brainless blobs end up behaving in ways that are downright spooky. “They change their movement from time to time, so they will move in a particular way, then they'll change it, then they'll turn around and go back,” says Levin. When they encounter other loose cells, they’ll herd them into little piles. Slice a xenobot open and it’ll pull itself together again, à la T-1000 from Terminator 2. Two xenobots might join together and scoot around as a happy couple. A xenobot with a hole in it can pick up and carry things.

[E.H. Ruddock]

Welp. Nice knowing you.

Funded in part by the DoD.

[McParadigm]

The xenobots could potentially be used toward a host of tasks, according to the study, which was partially funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a federal agency that oversees the development of technology for military use.

And although the supercomputer -- a powerful piece of artificial intelligence -- plays a big role in building these robots, it's "unlikely" that the AI could have evil intentions.

Slice a xenobot open and it’ll pull itself together again, à la T-1000 from Terminator 2.

The only good news here is that they’ll probably retcon this backstory in the sequel to show that the scientist secretly injected his humanity and caring into his creations, because he knew the supercomputer was inhabited by the ghost of Palpatine.

[tragabigzanda]

can we teach them to make ramen?

[Norris]

kill it with fire

[96583UP]

nothing could possib-ly go wrong

[LoathedVermin72]

I don’t know how to process this information

[BurtReynolds]

"Nothing human makes it out of the near future."

#̸̰̙͙̻̳̥̫̃̿̉͐̚ͅa̸̗̲͑̽͑̎͠ç̸̛̟̹̱̓̀̍͆̉c̷̢͖͛́e̷͙͑̂̽͑̏̃͗̇̊̕ĺ̵̡̛̹͖͈̤̬̍͌̔͝ͅê̸̡̪̰͕͖͕͊̀̓̀͘r̵̨̨̪̰̬̟̫̰̙͇͒̿͆̑̔̆̍̑̔̈́ǎ̴̘͓̱̝̰͚̙̝̄͋̇̓̔́͑͊͜t̸̨̡̫̫͇͇̀̆̇e̸̡̝̘̹͓̔̑̑̚t̴̢͊̿̅̌͆̐̄ḩ̶̝̥͍̑̓e̸̬͖̬͕̺͖̯̔p̵̪̘̺̈́͋́̍̉ͅr̷͍̆̇̓̕o̷͇̊c̷͓̥̰̞̿͆͘͝e̶̛̩̪̘͋̒͊̔s̸̰͈̻̥͎̮̰̓̑̒͒͆̑̕͜s̵̜̓͒͒̈́̓͋͝

[E.H. Ruddock]

I don’t know how to process this information

You need to finish Ocarina before they take over.

[E.H. Ruddock]

If this is just getting to the public now, they've already advanced further. Mildly concerned about this.

[BurtReynolds]

I make a lot of cryptic posts in the philosophy thread about this, but I've been thinking about this a lot over the past year.

It's insane to me how many people have no idea what's about to happen to them.

Everything else is polishing the brass on The Titanic.

[epilogue]

Go on...

[tragabigzanda]

pretty sure burt's about to slice his arm open and reveal his mechanical insides

[McParadigm]

What’s more insane: not recognizing the upcoming tipping point, wherein mankind will have unlocked dozens of technologies more existentially dangerous than the bomb, and each one far less containable? Or seeing it all coming, and mostly just responding by posting message board memes and calling it philosophy?

[surfndestroy]

What’s more insane: not recognizing the upcoming tipping point, wherein mankind will have unlocked dozens of technologies more existentially dangerous than the bomb, and each one far less containable? Or seeing it all coming, and mostly just responding by posting message board memes and calling it philosophy?

The former. The latter is message board equivalent of playing violin while the Titanic sinks, entertainment to die to.

[tragabigzanda]

edit: yeah what surf said

[BurtReynolds]

What’s more insane: not recognizing the upcoming tipping point, wherein mankind will have unlocked dozens of technologies more existentially dangerous than the bomb, and each one far less containable? Or seeing it all coming, and mostly just responding by posting message board memes and calling it philosophy?

The former. The latter is message board equivalent of playing violin while the Titanic sinks, entertainment to die to.

Enjoy life while you can. This road doesn't fork.

[BurtReynolds]

Go on...

It's probably better for everyone if I didn't but...

The story goes like this: Earth is captured by a technocapital singularity as renaissance rationalization and oceanic navigation lock into commoditization take-off. Logistically accelerating techno-economic interactivity crumbles social order in auto-sophisticating machine runaway. As markets learn to manufacture intelligence, politics modernizes, upgrades paranoia, and tries to get a grip. The body count climbs through a series of globe­ wars. Emergent Planetary Commercium trashes the Holy Roman Empire, the Napoleonic Continental System, the Second and Third Reich, and the Soviet International, cranking-up world disorder through compressing phases. Deregulation and the state arms-race each other into cyberspace. By the time soft-engineering slithers out of its box into yours, human security is lurching into crisis. Cloning, lateral genodata transfer, transversal replication, and cyberotics, flood in amongst a relapse onto bacterial sex. Neo-China arrives from the future. Hypersynthetic drugs click into digital voodoo... Retro-disease... Nanospasm...

Beyond the Judgement of God. Meltdown: planetary china-syndrome, dissolution of the biosphere into the technosphere, terminal speculative bubble crisis, ultravirus, and revolution stripped of all christian-socialist eschatology (down to its burn-core of crashed security). It is poised to eat your TV, infect your bank account, and hack xenodata from your mitochondria.

Converging upon terrestrial meltdown singularity, phase-out culture accelerates through its digitech-heated adaptive landscape, passing through compression thresholds normed to an intensive logistic curve: 1500, 1756, 1884, 1948, 1980, 1996, 2004, 2008, 2010, 2011 ...

Nothing human makes it out of the near-future.

Perhaps the best case scenario: we deplete our resources and (mostly) ruin the environment, facilitating societal collapse before we can birth an AI Singularity Machine God that transforms the earth into something we can't fathom but will almost certainly be horrified by, or would if we were still around.

[BurtReynolds]

wait how do you not understand the political power of internet memery by now? They don't call it "meme magic" for nothing. We're already capturing the hearts and minds of your children.