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scifigeneration · 5 years ago

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Not bot, not beast: scientists create first ever living, programmable organism

by Simon Coghlan and Kobi Leins

A remarkable combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and biology has produced the world’s first “living robots”.

This week, a research team of roboticists and scientists published their recipe for making a new lifeform called xenobots from stem cells. The term “xeno” comes from the frog cells (Xenopus laevis) used to make them.

One of the researchers described the creation as “neither a traditional robot nor a known species of animal”, but a “new class of artifact: a living, programmable organism”.

Xenobots are less than 1mm long and made of 500-1000 living cells. They have various simple shapes, including some with squat “legs”. They can propel themselves in linear or circular directions, join together to act collectively, and move small objects. Using their own cellular energy, they can live up to 10 days.

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This time-lapse video shows cells being manipulated and assembled to create xenobots. (Original video: Douglas Blackiston, Tufts University)

While these “reconfigurable biomachines” could vastly improve human, animal, and environmental health, they raise legal and ethical concerns.

Strange new ‘creature’

To make xenobots, the research team used a supercomputer to test thousands of random designs of simple living things that could perform certain tasks.

The computer was programmed with an AI “evolutionary algorithm” to predict which organisms would likely display useful tasks, such as moving towards a target.

After the selection of the most promising designs, the scientists attempted to replicate the virtual models with frog skin or heart cells, which were manually joined using microsurgery tools. The heart cells in these bespoke assemblies contract and relax, giving the organisms motion.

The creation of xenobots is groundbreaking.

Despite being described as “programmable living robots”, they are actually completely organic and made of living tissue. The term “robot” has been used because xenobots can be configured into different forms and shapes, and “programmed” to target certain objects – which they then unwittingly seek.

They can also repair themselves after being damaged.

Possible applications

Xenobots may have great value.

Some speculate they could be used to clean our polluted oceans by collecting microplastics.

Similarly, they may be used to enter confined or dangerous areas to scavenge toxins or radioactive materials.

Xenobots designed with carefully shaped “pouches” might be able to carry drugs into human bodies.

Future versions may be built from a patient’s own cells to repair tissue or target cancers. Being biodegradable, xenobots would have an edge on technologies made of plastic or metal.

Further development of biological “robots” could accelerate our understanding of living and robotic systems. Life is incredibly complex, so manipulating living things could reveal some of life’s mysteries — and improve our use of AI.

Legal and ethical questions

Conversely, xenobots raise legal and ethical concerns. In the same way they could help target cancers, they could also be used to hijack life functions for malevolent purposes.

Some argue artificially making living things is unnatural, hubristic, or involves “playing God”.

A more compelling concern is that of unintended or malicious use, as we have seen with technologies in fields including nuclear physics, chemistry, biology and AI.

For instance, xenobots might be used for hostile biological purposes prohibited under international law.

More advanced future xenobots, especially ones that live longer and reproduce, could potentially “malfunction” and go rogue, and out-compete other species.

For complex tasks, xenobots may need sensory and nervous systems, possibly resulting in their sentience. A sentient programmed organism would raise additional ethical questions. Last year, the revival of a disembodied pig brain elicited concerns about different species’ suffering.

Managing risks

The xenobot’s creators have rightly acknowledged the need for discussion around the ethics of their creation.

The 2018 scandal over using CRISPR (which allows the introduction of genes into an organism) may provide an instructive lesson here. While the experiment’s goal was to reduce the susceptibility of twin baby girls to HIV-AIDS, associated risks caused ethical dismay. The scientist in question is in prison.

When CRISPR became widely available, some experts called for a moratorium on heritable genome editing. Others argued the benefits outweighed the risks.

While each new technology should be considered impartially and based on its merits, giving life to xenobots raises certain significant questions:

Should xenobots have biological kill-switches in case they go rogue?

Who should decide who can access and control them?

What if “homemade” xenobots become possible? Should there be a moratorium until regulatory frameworks are established? How much regulation is required?

Lessons learned in the past from advances in other areas of science could help manage future risks, while reaping the possible benefits.

Long road here, long road ahead

The creation of xenobots had various biological and robotic precedents. Genetic engineering has created genetically modified mice that become fluorescent in UV light.

Designer microbes can produce drugs and food ingredients that may eventually replace animal agriculture.

In 2012, scientists created an artificial jellyfish called a “medusoid” from rat cells.

Robotics is also flourishing.

Nanobots are tiny robots that carry out specific tasks. In medicine, they can be used for targeted drug delivery. shutterstock

Nanobots can monitor people’s blood sugar levels and may eventually be able to clear clogged arteries.

Robots can incorporate living matter, which we witnessed when engineers and biologists created a sting-ray robot powered by light-activated cells.

In the coming years, we are sure to see more creations like xenobots that evoke both wonder and due concern. And when we do, it is important we remain both open-minded and critical.

About The Authors:

Simon Coghlan is a Senior Research Fellow in Digital Ethics at the School of Computing and Information Systems, University of Melbourne and Kobi Leins is a Senior Research Fellow in Digital Ethics, University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

#artificial intelligence #nanotechnology #wearable technology #xenobots #science #science news

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hactavistaanonymous777 · 7 years ago

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MK ULTRA PROJECT: PSYCHIATRY AND CIA

The original article is written in Turkish, here is an directly translated edition in English.

https://istihbaratveanaliz.wordpress.com/2017/01/31/mk-ultra-projesi-psikiyatri-ve-cia/

#BRAINWASHING #CIA #woman #CANADA #MKULTRA #PROJECT #compensation

Text circulation← MK ULTRA PROJECT: Reading and Writing the BrainASSESSMENT MESSAGE: As a private office, we are policemen and our citizens, RAHMET, TSK, SAFETY AND SOUTHERN DILERİZİZ. →

Psychiatry And CIA Did you watch Manchurian Candidate filmin? In this film you will find a striking example of how psychiatry is abused by an intelligence organization. In essence the story is a true story. It is a reflection of the CIA 's secret hidden-mind control experiments in McGill University, a reputable university in Canada. The ability to control the mental state and behavior of the human mind with electrodes placed in the brain has long been of interest to the CIA.

Since decades, 'brainwashing doctors' have received high amounts of money on behalf of different research projects and have seen their patients as biological machines that they can experiment with. This, people are transformed into machines by removing emotions, free wills, and selves with the ability to choose. McGill University, where I work as a guest lecturer for a while, is also embarrassed today because of having hosted this terrible project. Dr. Ewen Cameron was a well-known professor of psychiatry in Canada in the sixties and also the head of the psychiatric department at the university. USAas well as the chairmanship of the Psychiatric Society in Canada, he also led the World Psychiatric Society. But Cameron had a dark side that everyone did not know: he was experimenting with mind control on behalf of the CIA at the lab at the Allan Memorial Institute, the University.

He has experimented with hundreds of brainwashing and mental control in these laboratories and has put his patients first in the coma with the mind-washing technique called spiritual motivation . His illness, which almost closed his consciousness, tried to change them by listening to messages with his headphones for days and weeks. Although he said that these experiments were conducted to replace people with mental illnesses, all of his findings and theories were used by the CIA for different purposes.

The procedure called psychological motivation has two steps: First, 'dissolution' is created in patients. In other words, with instruments such as electroconvulsive shock, medication, and sensory deprivation, the patient is almost comatose and the mind's work is stopped. The patients who come to this situation can not do their own care, normal toilet arrangements are broken, they are cut off from eating and drinking. They forget their names, their history and where they are. In the second step, the same messages are recorded for hours on the patient. With the help of earplugs, the patient is regularly exposed to the same messages, even if they are sleeping in the rooms, through the speaker. Cameron's experiments have caused very painful consequences for many patients, such as death, coma, loss of memory or personality, brain damage, or psychosis.

While I was still a young psychiatric assistant a quarter of a century ago, I had the opportunity to read the book "Psychiatry and the CIA: Victims of Mind Control, Harvey M. Weinstein, the writer of the book and a psychiatric expert himself, could understand what happened to his father years later when reading a book criticism. The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate'(Quest for Manchurian Candidate), the CIA and brainwashing experiments were told in the book. The son, who saw that everything that was told there was the same as what was done to his father. Cameron and the state sued. He did not want to move this case to the court so that he would be named CIA, and the Weinstein family reconciled for $ 750,000 without going to court. This is the greatest compensation that the CIA ever paid outside the court. The US government did not accept any responsibility for this issue and committed the crime entirely to the CIA. Cameron's experiments are a striking example of both abuse of science and how a state can lead to human and unethical experiments. However, the basic principle of medicine since time is prime non-nocered , never harming!

the documents also appeared in 2015 in the United States to support torture American Psychiatric Association has revealed that collaborated with the Ministry of Defense and the CIA. giving rise to torture during interrogations, the American Psychiatric Association, eased necessary under the ethical standards to be followed during interrogation.

The CIA has also been ahead of others by using LSD, hypnosis, and other drugs to pursue a subconscious mind. In 1975, at least 1500 American soldiers were given LSD without any knowledge and were used in brainwashing experiments. In the 1960s LSD began to be used during interrogation and the effect of LSD on the query was searched on subjects who did not know that this drug was given and did not accept to enter the experiment. The purpose of all of these projects is clear: to control mind and behavior, to translate man into a robotic, death and war machine using mediators such as drugs, hypnosis, electrodes and electroshock.

Colin A. Ross, The CIA Doctorsthe brainwashing experiments during the Cold War were made by leading psychiatrists in America. For example, the MK-ULTRA project created by the CIA was launched in April 1953, but as with all brainwashing projects, the document of this project was censored by the CIA. Much of MK-ULTRA's money has been spent on exploring the information that will be used in CIA operations. MK-ULTRA's subprojects are related to drugs, chemical and biological weapons. In some other projects, it was tried to find which substances in the drug led to forgetfulness during interrogation. Psychiatry and psychology mean that if people are used as a means of making mischief between people by killing, torturing or disloyal, rather than by good, then they are playing danger bells for humanity.

Why do I need attention now to this issue? I was swallowing little slices while I was reading an article in a professional journal recently. A respected scientist who counted the 'founding fathers' of positive psychology was, according to the claim, employed in large financial funds to develop the CIA's inquiry and torture techniques. The man really is sorry. Let's leave this story for the week.

Kemal Sayar

http://www.gercekhayat.com.t is

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