Introduction

Not long ago a machine designed by a computer and constructed of living cells was something crazy to imagine. Not anymore. In this episode I talk with Josh Bongard and Mike Levin about how this is becoming a reality. There are lots of physical possibilities for how animals and robots can coexist but we have only explored a small part of the morphology design space. Life began on Earth at least 3.5 to 4 billion years ago, and it has been evolving ever since. The diversity of life on Earth today is the result of evolution that occurs by natural selection. But, in the next 100 plus years there won’t just be plants, animals and humans from natural selection, there will also be computational designed organisms from AI. Computational designed organisms are living machines inspired by the designs and capabilities of biology and computing. These “biobots” are a new form of artificial intelligence. We also talk about The Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms doing things to create other things, all what is possible and how it can change the world. Furthermore we dive into Xenobots, the first living robots they have built which are able to reproduce. They have repurposed living cells from frog embryos and assembled them into entirely new life-forms that can move toward a target. This discovery may be meaningful for the future of medicine, the environment and even life itself. Who are Joshua Bongard & Michael Levin? Dr. Joshua Bongard is the Veinott Professor of Computer Science at the University of Vermont and the director of the Morphology, Evolution & Cognition Laboratory. His work involves computational approaches to the automated design and manufacture of soft-, evolved-, and crowdsourced robots, as well as computer-designed organisms. Dr. Michael Levin is a developmental and synthetic biologist; the Vannevar Bush Professor of Biology at Tufts University, where he directs the Allen Discovery Research Center, and associate faculty at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute. Levin and his colleagues use developmental biophysics, cognitive science, and computational modeling approaches to understand tissue plasticity, especially focused on bioelectrical information processing in non-neural cell networks. Both Josh and Mike are co-directors of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms. Topics we touch: Welcome Josh & Michael to The Rhys Show: (00:00) Through line that ties all of Josh’s work together: (02:24) Through line that ties all of Mike’s work together: (02:55) Josh (computational side) & Mike (biology side) collaborating together: (04:35) The impact of synthetic biology on society in the next decades. Xenobots & ICDO Institution?: (07:01) How does Xenobot fit into the vision of synthetic morphology?: (11:03) What is a Xenobot - an organism designed by AI?: (14:06) Pronunciation & meaning of “xeno”bots: (17:50) Getting Xenobots to do things: (18:23) Biochemical/bio electrical signaling - Making things do different things: (23:01) About perverse instantiation: (26:09) How is the biosphere going to change in the next couple of decades according to Mike: (30:18) Rewriting the biosphere according to Josh: (35:10) About morpho space - what is scary and safe in the morpho space: (36:55) Advice from Michael: (42:44) Advice from Josh: (44:58) Connect with Josh Bongard & Mike Levin: Josh Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKCmKOwVkoAh2NDp0T-Ovng Josh Twitter: https://twitter.com/DoctorJosh Josh Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Bongard About Mike: https://allencenter.tufts.edu/our-team/michael-levin/ Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/drmichaellevin Website “The Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms (ICDO)”: https://icdorgs.org/ CDOs: https://cdorgs.github.io/code