No, Zenorobots Are NOT a New Form of Self-Replication
It happens with a fair amount of regularity — researchers somewhere will make sensational claims about having achieved this or that amazing feat, but we find on investigation that it was all mostly, or totally, hype.
No, not that kind of bot! (Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash
Thus, it is with the recent claim by researchers at Harvard, University of Vermont and Tufts to have created the world’s first self-replicating Zenorobots. According to the researchers, they have “discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction.”
Well, not quite, argues Dr. Brian Miller, Research Director at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, in a post for Evolution News. So does cell biologist John Timmer, who describes it as “interesting research, but no, we do not have living, reproducing robots.”
Miller begins his post by noting that “scientists at the University of Vermont, Tufts University, and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University claim to have created the first self-replicating xenobot.
“Xenobots are artificially interconnected biological tissues whose arrangements are determined by some algorithm. An announcement at the Wyss Institute website lauds the researchers for having ‘discovered an entirely new form of biological reproduction’ and for applying their discovery to ‘create the first-ever, self-replicating living robots.’”
For the rest of Miller’s analysis, go here.