Artificial Life.....should we mess with this stuff?

[Rukoth]

http://science.howstuffworks.com/artificial-life-news.htm


In the article there. So pretty much in three to ten years scientists should be able to "create" artificial life.

Should we be tampering with this kind of stuff? Will it benefit or cause problems for the future? I am kind of at a impass on this. On one point it seems to be messing with things we should let progress naturally, and on the other hand it could bring ample opportunity for many things.

So anyways, what are your takes on this?

[Zir]

It's not as controversial as something like cloning. If we create single celled or basic multi celled organisms we'd have complete control over them. If something in the isolated glove cabinet looked dangerous, we'd be able to kill it. This kind of thing is the way forward to making biological fuel and power sources. Renewable organic tools

[Ammon Ra]

Creating artificial life from scratch will take very very long. Engineering existing life to do what you want similarly depends on what you intend to do with such technology.

Technology =! evil/bad

Its what humans decide to do with the technology that really matters.

[Wintermute]

I'm all for this (currently) because of the possibilities it could create. For example, creating some kind of micro-organism that could remove pollution from the air with greater efficiency than plants.

[Mac_Bug]

I for one welcome our artificial overlords

[Norsehound]

Frankenstein, anyone?

[ThursdaysChild]

we're gonna need something to fight all the von neumann machines we're making eventually

[Nerdfish]

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when my fear is gone I will turn and face fear's path, and only I will remain.
- Frank Herbert, Dune.

You can't think when you are afraid, and good decisions don't come without thinking.

This is Nothing to be panicking about. I'd worry more about getting ran over by a drunken driver. Where is the white paper on this ? A link is appreciated.

[0dyguru]

Did not Mr. Big Hands create us in his image? It seems creation is our prime directive.

[TheTick]

Although I'm opposed to try to play God, I agree that if we're able to create something which can help us overall it may be worthwhile to continue.

Honestly I think the Stem Cell debate is much more drastic/volatile than this one.

[Victor Rovial]

I have promised myself that if we create a life form from scratch, I shall strip nude, and run around the house screaming, "humanity is a god race." My family has already been notified of this.

[Rincewind]

I´m all for playing God. All this religious baggage we´re carrying back from the days we hunted mammoths is getting tiresome to hear whenever there is a new scientific breakthrough.

[Handarazuur]

If God can play God, why can't we? We're at least as qualified as He was, and if the Bible is accurate, we have the benefit of hindsight whereas He didn't.

[No Surrender]

I agree with Rince, the whole "playing god" argument only works if you don't believe that organisms as we know them today came to be due to millions of years of evolutionary adaptation.

On the other hand, simple microbes such as bacteria do "evolve at a faster rate" so to speak because they go through generations quicker and have larger populations which is why there's already anti-biotic resistant bacteria even though anti-biotics were only discovered a hundred years ago. This warrants a significant amount of testing and some sort of deadman's switch in case something unforeseen happens with our creations.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Horrified? Hell no! I love this plan! This is a great plan. What could possibly go wrong?

[sang]

Never say that. When you do you are dead. If you said that in a alien or predator say good by. I have to agree with Rincewind that religion is playing a large part in keeping us back( not disrespect any religion) . I cant really think this off evil after all evil is just an opinion.

[Kirjava]

I think Shoe's tongue may have been just the tiniest bit in his cheek.

[BmB]

What exactly should a singlecelled creature be able to do? For all we know, an artificial lifeform wouldn't even be capable of interacting biochemically with ordinary terrestrial life.

[Antiloop]

The whole point of creating an artificial lifeform must surely be that it should be able to interact with ordinary terrestrial life? Generally when humans create something, it has to have a purpose. That purpose might be benign or malevolent.

[BmB]

No, I think right now the point is: "Can we do it?"

[Antiloop]

Most engineering challenges are possible if enough time and money are invested.
Doubt the basic science is here yet though, ie do anyone even have a rough theory how to build an entirely new self sustained, self replicating life form?

But heck, if someone comes up with the answer, let's kick that Pandoras box open and see what might come flying out, shall we?

[Zepherian]

Fear is also a life saver that stops people doing stupid things.

As for artificial life, I think we should study the possibilities but not make too many intrusions into this realm as of yet, we're not ready. I say this because we have such a limited knowledge, on a community consciousness level, of natural ecosystems and life mechanisms, that we don't have the big picture necessary to frame our developments in artificial life. All technology that envolves autonomous replication of biological or mechanical elements should be developed with extreme caution, as we are a fallible and belligirant species that cannot yet be trusted to put the technology to the best possible use.

I would rather people consider the implications of: The Secret Life of Plants (http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Plants-Peter-Tompkins/dp/0060143266/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1208791385&sr=8-1)

[Antiloop]

Well, humanity have a rather long history of making large changes to natural systems without considering the potential damage that might result from these changes.

Case in point - DDT. After using this stuff for 20-30 years everybody is totally surprised when it turns out that this chemical agent, that is designed not to break down and is supposed to stay in nature for a very long time, actually starts to move up through the food chain and harms people too.
Gosh! Who could possible have thought about that one in advance!

[Starblade]

Frankenstein, anyone?

We have the foresight of having weapons around though, for in case Frankenstein's Monster goes berserk. We might also have fire.

[Arinax]

actually we already created the first artifical bacteria... will be in the upcomming nature magazine a friend of mine told me who finished studying biology

[ThursdaysChild]

though my initial comment was meant as a joke, i think that actually engineering artificial life forms may run the same sorts of challenges and risks as creating self replicating machines (with slightly imperfect replicative ability that produces variation) in terms of containment and safety.

on the other hand, if controlled under limited conditions, this field could easily allow people to test theories of environment/bacterial interactions that lacked safe or viable test organisms to use.

[Imperial Dane]

Wait.. aren't the robots supposed to try and gain dominion over humanity ? or was it the apes ? but again, what about the mole people they should have a chance as well...

I mean what do we gain from artificial life ?
"Yay i just created my own artificial life form.. hooray ! .. now what does it do ?" I mean what is wrong with just building a machine to get the job done ? Or doing it yourself ?

[Sajuukar]

Give me a zombie virus, and I will be appeased.

[bottenbreker]

i think that it would be a good thing if you could be able to built organs from scratch. so you can help people who are in need of an organ. but creating full life seems pretty far away IMO.

actually we already created the first artifical bacteria...

well, that's pretty impressive. cause if you can create bacteria. you surely can alter a existing bacteria so you can make them "friendly" bacteria that can help kill viruses that enter your body.

[darkelf]

Dane, what we can gain is things doing menial tasks like cleaning or clearing dumpsters without having to worry about feeding them. While it might still be a bit out there we could design creatures that live off of what people leave in dumpsters. (These could after a while become a delicacy among the higher circles of society)

[Rukoth]

What exactly should a singlecelled creature be able to do?

Why don't you ask the single-celled creatures that cause the deaths of people every year?

[Can Not]

What exactly should a singlecelled creature be able to do?
I don't know, why don't you ask Hitler what exactly a single person could do?

[Mac_Bug]

News flash:

We're all Cylons.

dun dun dun

[Verrin]

It certainly didn't take long for Godwin's Law to come into effect.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

Hitler was a Cylon?

[ThursdaysChild]

hes probably a Skrull, isnt everyone?

[Victor Rovial]

a single celled organism, tailored by us to a specific task, would be about as threatening to humanity as...actually it would be the least threatening living thing in the world. It does not even have the miles of excess unused genes normal natural life has that allow it to mutate into frightening deadly forms. It would take an artificial life form millions of years to change its capabilities on its own.

[Blackmain]

As long as we don't create something that is better than we are I think we will be ok.

[SquidDNA]

In three billion years of evolution there hasn't been an organism that can outcompete everything. While it's not inconceivable that rushing something like this to applications might have unforseen consequences, they wouldn't be world-ending.

Dr. Frankenstein's hubris was illustrated by his creating a human when he did not know how a human worked, what his creation would do. In contrast, we're only able to do these types of experiments and possibly make artificial life because of centuries of reverse engineering it. Before we make an artificial cell, we're going to have a computer model of an artificial cell, and we're going to spend a lot of time comparing the model to the real thing before we start seeding the oceans with these things to supplement flagging cyanobacteria populations or something, trust me.

[Rukoth]

Thats true squid. While it wouldn't necessarily defeat everything if science messed up and created a "super germ" if you will, it may still wipe out a sizable population of creatures. And while it might not beat out "everything" what if one of the things it beat out was humanity?

[SquidDNA]

Why would it?

The worst case is really something like you send it to "market" as a recycling / landfill bug and it goes wild and starts eating plastic in places it's not supposed to. Even if you engineered a gut symbiote to help people with chronic digestive problems and it turned into a pathogen instead, it would hit the reinforced concrete wall that is basic public health-- in the places in the world where it would be used as a gut symbiote, it's least likely that someone is going to drink water contaminated by the feces of someone who was ill with a mutant strain of it.

Please don't say "what if it went airborne." It doesn't work like that. Yes, we do know that it doesn't. In the thousands of years of scrutiny of health, we've not found an enteric pathogen that is also airborne (not counting things that are spread by flies.)

[Victor Rovial]

besides, its not like you could stop it if you wanted to. SCIENCE WILL NOT BE DENIED!! Resistance is Futile. :borg:

[Kalamain]

Why does everyone seem to think that when scientists talk about 'Artificial life' they thing of monstrous beings that take over the world and obliterate us all....

A friend of mine works in a sewage plant and he told me that they have wanted something that will break down raw sewage better and faster.
Well.....This would be a GREAT project for the scientists.
And the good thing about creating a new life is that you can give it EXACTLY what it needs to do the job.....No more no less.
The new life form that they create in the lab to eat and reduce and clean sewage or to do any small level task is NOT going to take over the world. It won't destroy the ecology and it won't evolve. Unless you design it to.

But saying that....There will be people that will want to make new super virus' to kill......Oh....Hang on....they already do. :disgust:

[Cyberbob]

The topic of rogue substance-eating bacteria brings Ringworld to mind.

[Kratos]

Science itself is neutral.
People with bad intends can use science for bad things, the same thing goes the other way around.
But, as further we get in sience, the more devestating a single "bad" person can archieve.
I believe, a LOT people would build gene warriors for their aims, but that is another subject.

About what Squid said: "In three billion years of evolution there hasn't been an organism that can outcompete everything. While it's not inconceivable that rushing something like this to applications might have unforseen consequences, they wouldn't be world-ending." You cannot prove that, you can only specify that on earth, but heck the earth means nothing compared to the vastnes of the galaxy.

I believe sience should be absolutley free as long as it`s within moral limits.
For example what Dr. Mengele did he killed a vast number of impriisioned people in different ways to study their corpses, he also tryed through this to assess raciel differences.
Of course such "science" is unforgiveable and not tolerable.
Ok, so actually there should be limits within sience has to develope. Some say religion hinders sience, that is indeed true, because killing is a sin in the christian believe.

[BmB]

Because the flood is soooo realistic.

[Cyberbob]

Who are you talking to?

[Silver_Wolf#]

As long as we give AIs a moral program, or even make it so their able to learn and then treat them as we would children (keep psychotic army generals or in general morons away from it/them) then yes we should go for it.

[Kratos]

Impelment Isaac Asimov laws and you will be fine, no exceptions and there you go.
But AI is not really on the topic here, its more about biological "artificial" life.
I still wonder when finally the time comes when we can get rid of army :) .

[SquidDNA]

Someone didn't read the thread!

Kratos, science should not be constrained by morals. It should be constrained by ethics, because everything should be constrained by ethics. Mengele's work was unethical because it killed unwilling human beings in an inhumane fashion. You honestly can't draw a comparison between that and this.

Sure, as a scientist, the work you do can be constrained by your own morals. But that's a personal choice.

Finally, "You cannot prove that, you can only specify that on earth, but heck the earth means nothing compared to the vastnes of the galaxy." I'm not sure exactly what you're saying. What can't I prove? The Earth does not mean nothing compared to the vastness of the galaxy. It's all the evidence we have. The vastness of the galaxy tells us a lot about nothing that has anything to do with evolution.

[Kalamain]

I still wonder when finally the time comes when we can get rid of army :) .

When one group wins....Or the human race is made extinct :eek: :tomb: :(

[Kratos]

I would rather see the sience measured by ethical morality.
A scientist should think about what he is doing in the ethical (motive, consequences, urgency) way and also stand to his princibles (moral like no killing, not harimg inocent beeings).

For example if we would only consider ethics, we could pretty much argue that breeding lifing organ donors is considered ok, because in giving up one artificial life we could rescue at last one person or even more.

Those words are heavily linked togther are are troublesome to divide. I once heard a nice statement to that: "An ethical man knows he shouldn't cheat on his wife. A moral man wouldn't."

When we reach the point when we are actually able to artifically create human like beeings, where is the difference? A artificial human beeing is considered as animal? Can be killed just like that, because it`s artificial?

Also about your statement about outcompeting organism, you cannot prove me I am wrong and I cannot prove that you are wrong, only when we have been there and seen it we can declare it as proved, before that those are mere speculations.
We can only claim: "We have not found it on our planet so presumably it is like that".

About this "it`s" all the evidence we have thing, that is a very good reason why mankind believed in history the world was flat, because it was all the evidence they had so far.

[SquidDNA]

What the hell are you on about?

We're talking about microorganisms, first of all, not human beings. You're needlessly broadening the scope of this discussion. Microorganisms are not innocent beings. They have no conscience, no consciousness, they have no goals or aspirations to quash, they are not capable of suffering. Killing and exploiting them is guiltless and has happened for eons before we even existed.

Please, this kind of "you can't prove I don't have a million dollars so maybe I do" sort of argument is silly. This isn't science fiction. There are rules. Like I said, we're only able to do this because we've studied the rules intensely. In truth, the main reason we're doing this is to study the rules even more intensely-- the junk about potential applications is just for grant money. It's as if you're saying someday someone could build a perpetual motion machine, nevermind that everyone so far has failed and it defies what we know.

[Starblade]

About this "it`s" all the evidence we have thing, that is a very good reason why mankind believed in history the world was flat, because it was all the evidence they had so far.

If I recall my Ancient Civilizations course correctly, this isn't true (or rather, not exactly). While most of the uneducated thought the world was flat, those who had received education were well aware that it was not.

[Zepherian]

Squid: I believe there is danger when by human ingenuity we could create something that works outside the normal interspecies makeup of life on earth and that could indeed hold the possibility of outcompeting everything. Dude, you're a sci-fi fan, have you forgotten the grey goo stories allready?

The potential for extreme danger, even with artificial biological entities is there, the fact that it is in an improbability does not mean it is an impossibility and the stakes are pretty high so any fuck up could be potentially catastrophic.

And even if it's just a "minor" consequence, like the destruction of local populations, it is still a sin. We need to know more of the nature we allready have than going on and fucking up the whole system. Has the monsanto biological contamination bullshit not told us anything about how this works? (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-842180934463681887)

[Kratos]

I agree with Zepherian here.

Starblade, do you actually now what basically education is? It`s not like a tome of wisdom fell from the heavens down on earth and told the scholars about that.
As a matter of fact the greeks already discussed about that before even christ was born. Phytagoras presumed the earth was round for astehtic reasons. A little later the one of brightest head of his time (and yes very much likely "educated") Democritus (from him comes the word "Atom" btw) believed it was flat.

Back to the topic, it is very important to see what lies beneath something and what begets something. A very easy example about seeimg something from a larger scope, the us governemnt doesn`t negotiate with terrorists, even when they have hostages, because if they did that once the terroists will do that again and again because it wokred once. On the smaller scope it is reasonable to pay the money, to get someone free out of their custody, on the larger scope it would lead to more and more hostage taking.

I completly agree that using microorganism in a beneficial way is absolutly a good idea, but you have to see the following steeps as well.

I don`t get what you mean by "rules". And one should always be carefull to call a possible technology or discovery science fiction, just go back two generations and you will see we life in a sience fiction world.
My prove statement was about you claiming, that "in three billion years of evolution there hasn't been an organism that can outcompete everything". You cannot prove that sir, history as ist a mere millisecond and foundings from early ages would hardly be able to show us that. If there had been a super virus that killed every biomatter on earth (of course including itself aber it killed everything) there would be no foundings or any proves left after two billion years. Get my point?

Also you take the computer as tool as some sort of wonderweapon, it can only calculate consequences within borders and these borders were unwillingly created by the programmers / users of the software.

[SquidDNA]

And then someone actually calculated its circumference. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth#Eratosthenes) This is a good read Kratos.

Zeph, Kratos, where does this possibility come from? Where does this danger come from? I have seen nothing but your fear of things you do not understand.

Yeah, Monsanto said "Hey let's saturate the environment with recombinantly produced pesticide! What's the worst that could happen?" without actually thinking what the worst that could happen was, and it turned out to be "all the insects die." If you're bringing this up to say "we should definitely be exceedingly cautious about these sorts of things in the future" then yes, I agree, but not because it's an artificially produced organism-- because any project involving genetic modification should be examined thoroughly. But it sounds like you're saying that somewhere a tube will break and this will turn into a morphing death cloud and a B science fiction movie where a crack team of elite soldiers has to infiltrate the underground lab and activate the nuclear bomb to save the earth or something, and I mean, come on seriously.

I don't read science fiction because I'm enraptured by the possibility that all those things could happen someday. I read it because an internally consistent but radically different scenario than our own allows characters to develop and interact in novel ways.

It's possible that all the air molecules in the room could hit me in the back of the room simultaneously. I dont plan on it.

Re: Extinctions, we've not seen an extinction in the fossil record where everything died. We just haven't.

Also, what are you saying about computers?

[Starfisher]

Kratos: Your objection is equivalent to fearing CERN because it might cause a black hole. Yes, it could. It also could cause fully formed fire breathing adamantine dragons to spring from the nether and lay waste to the earth. Anything can happen at any time, stop doing anything!

(Incidentally, if an uber virus wiped out all life, how are we here?)

You're immediately assuming that small quantities of life created in secure, sterile labs will somehow not only be able to survive in a non-lab setting, it will be perfectly adapted for the outside environment, more so than things that have evolved there. Self-replication is something to be careful with, no doubt, and the people working on this sort of thing are certainly going to be careful given the lessons of the past few decades. But to extend "careful" to "HOLY CRAP WE MIGHT DESTROY THE WORLD" is taking it way too far.

[Kratos]

Indeed it is a good read and I actually read that before, if you are familiar with dates you would have recongnised that between them lie 100 years. So I don`t really get your point. Or were you trying to state that mankind actually progressed in sience throught the history, hmmm ok point taken for granted.

About the extinction, the oldest discovered living fossil is 3,5 thousand million years old. Those were of course mere bacteria, I could go further into detail, but my vocabulary is missing a lot words for I am not a native english speaker. That is the border, we have no fossils that go beyond that time in the past. So you cannot claim anything about possible life before that point.

About computers I am afraid your are not that familiar with programming? When you are testing something with a software, the software itself is only able to test something within its programmed boundarys (the boundarys is the scope of service) and next depending on the input from the user.

"This danger" is inherited by the users. Guns for example are neutral as well and won`t kill anybody. But people using them are the flaw of this whole "it`s neutral" thing.

And Squid, try beeing a litte less arrogant, just because you fail to bring forward an argument. You can easly tell this fact because of this little sentence "thing of you do not understand".

I will not start a fight here with your, because all I am doing is bringing forward some different view to the same matter. And I really like to be disabused, on solid facts.

Edit: Starfisher I was refering to the users on that, I apologize that this was not really visible.

[Busby]

"This danger" is inherited by the users

Maniacal evil geniuses who want to destroy the world as revenge for having a bad childhood don't belong in laboratories anyway.

[Arinax]

Okay Kratos, i ll help you...

there are already strong attempts of making Artifical Life, there is as much risk as with any other new technology and AL is nothing else... dont be a ludite, you can implement so many ways to kill artifical bacteria, you must not be afraid... there are tons(okay thats a lie but a bunch) of antibiotics out there which can deal with gram positive bacteria perfectly, and AL can be designed for weaknesses, it is a product not a lifeform made by the selection of evolution itself... you can trick life to die fast telomerase is one of the upcoming thought of mine, there are tests about it prolonging life of yeasts and knock out gene can also lead to very short telomeres so they are not long lived cells... you just must not be afraid of technology.... just look at it with a positive attitude

[Sethero]

The point of doing this isn't to engineer superbugs, or create a new kind of car wax or even to create something useful. Why then are they going through all this trouble to create something new?

They're answering a question. Can life develop in a particular set of conditions independent of a creationist force? If they can prove that single celled organisms can spawn from a specific set of chemical conditions without outside interference (beyond assembling all the elements), it is a further proof that there is no need for a creator. Think of the movie Expelled; one of the main arguments is that there's no evidence life can spontaneously occur without the hand of God. This is the scientific test of that hypothesis, one of very few creationist claims that can be scientifically tested. This is an argument between science and faith.

Pretty much all of the arguing in this thread discusses what happens when they try to use these new creatures... and while that's something worth discussing, it's not really something even on the horizon at the moment, so I think everyone can put down the tinfoil hats and calm down. Don't think of this as an argument over genetic engineering, it's not. This is about creating life where there was none to begin with.

Plus it's only going to result in more realistic replicants.

[SquidDNA]

I don't think this has anything to do with a grudge against religion.

Like I said, this has grown out of an interest in developing and testing an accurate computer model of a living cell. Making an artificial cell is a test of that ability to model. Deviations from expected behaviors cause you to refine the model. The potential for learning about cellular biology is really limitless, here.

Kratos, I'm not going to chase your goalposts around all day. I said in 3 billion years there was no evidence of something outcompeting everything else. You said that if it had, there wouldn't be evidence of it, and I responded that on the contrary, we'd have seen an extinction where nothing had survived in the fossil record, and then you responded that our earliest fossils were 3.5 billion years old and there was no record of anything earlier than that and I couldn't prove anything about it. I wasn't trying to, notice where I said 3 billion?

[Zepherian]

Squid: watch the documentary I linked at the end of my post to the end, and you'll see that genetic pollution is allready a huge issue that threatens a wide spectrum of major food sources, something unheard of in human history, to my knowledge. And all we will have if they are decimated is some artificially enhanced foodstocks, several of which are being studied under suspicion that they actually poison us. I mean, the implications of genetic tampering are pretty dire allready, you don't have to go to the sci-fi scenarios to warrant extreme caution.

And yes, of course I fear fuckups. Not an orwelian I don't sleep at night the world is ending fear, but an aknowledgement of how fallible human endeavours (including the endeavour space shuttle ironically) can be.

And last but not least, if people read The Secret Life of Plants book, linked in my first post in this thread, there comes the inevitable question: is this crap really needed? From all the evidence I've seen it appears to me that life reengineers itself, and with proper biosustained agriculture it becomes more or less apparent that the long term production values of traditional methods outperform the industrial agriculture methods we've been sold as an improvement. Yes, I said it. Industrialized agriculture is slowly eroding our foodsupply and leaving us with an unhealthy wasteland of grade b products. And the health of people around the world is failing, and one major link in the chain is what we eat.

The solution is not really genetic engineering imo. It has unintended consequences and does nothing natural selection can't do better in similar timeframes. The real focus of science, imo, should be scaling up organic agriculture, ie, genetic and persticide free, into industrial capacities, and/or increasing local farm productions so populations are not seperated from their food source, something that is becoming apparent this year was a huge mystake to make, as the western world teeters on the edge of a possible food crisis.

Anyone interested in seeing the other side of agriculture can google for the hunza people of northern pakistan, renown for their longevity, which is a partly a consequence of their diet (allthough the mountain environment they live in is also a major factor, I imagine due to increased sterility of the air at 4000m and a higher blood cell count in the native peoples).

We have options in where to put out creative, creating life out of nothing to me is starting to seem like a futile folly. This however does not mean I advocate an end of genetic research, which I consider a valuable science. Mearly an opinion about the usefullness of its aplications, as I see it's value more in the areas of classification and repair of biological entities than of the egocentric human expansion of species evolution, something which we do not need and a lot of us do not want.