Living Robots Can Now Reproduce, and I’m Terrified

The xenobots use “kinetic replication,” which is a process that occurs at the molecular level but has never before been seen in whole cells or organisms. The scientists used artificial intelligence to test billions of potential body shapes for the xenobots to increase their ability to replicate. The best shape turned out to be similar to Pac-Man. When placed in a petri dish, the xenobot found and gathered hundreds of stem cells in its mouth and formed them into a new xenobot within a few days. Honestly, the concept scares me, but the researchers insist the living machines were entirely contained in a lab and easily extinguished.