AI with AI: Artificial Intelligence with Andy Ilachinski · CNA

Rebroadcast: Xen and the Art of Motorcell Maintenance

July 2, 2021·40 min·3 clips

Doug Blackiston built the first xenobot in just seven days, turning a dismissed idea into a living reality.

This episode is a rebroadcast of an interview with xenobot researchers Sam Kriegman and Doug Blackiston, hosted by Andy Ilachinski and his co-host from the AI with AI podcast. The discussion centers on xenobots, living robots constructed from frog cells, and the convergence of artificial intelligence, robotics, and developmental biology. The hosts first summarize the European Commission's 108-page AI Act proposal, which categorizes AI systems by risk, mentioning its single exclusion for military AI systems. They then highlight two biology-related news stories: an MIT project translating spider web construction into music using machine learning and a National Academies report on the ethics of neural organoids and chimeras. The interview details the collaboration between Kriegman, a computer scientist using evolutionary algorithms, and Blackiston, a developmental biologist. Xenobots 1.0 were designed in simulation and then built from frog heart and skin cells to match virtual models. Xenobots 2.0 reversed this process, with researchers extracting biological algorithms from observed xenobot behaviors to refine their simulations. These biological constructs exhibit emergent behaviors like collective piling of particles, self-repair after injury, and a simple memory function using light-sensitive proteins. A key insight is that xenobots operate outside natural selection, as their forms are shaped by artificial intelligence in a virtual environment. The researchers debate whether xenobots qualify as organisms, noting they lack reproduction but are self-motile, self-healing, and biodegradable. They propose future applications including environmental cleanup, targeted drug delivery, and swarms of specialized xenobots that could combine into larger structures. The ethical landscape is acknowledged as complex, with existing institutional review boards overseeing the work but open questions remaining, especially regarding potential future incorporation of neural tissue. The tone is enthusiastic and educational, blending technical explanations with philosophical questions about the nature of life and design. The style is a conversational interview, with the host expressing excitement over the link to his own background in cellular automata. Listeners interested in bioengineering, artificial life, and the ethical frontiers of AI-driven biology will find this episode compelling. Those seeking purely technical AI software discussions or who are uncomfortable with speculative biological manipulation might choose to skip it.

As heard by us

A clear tour of xenobots, with time-bound AI regulation as the opening frame.

This rebroadcast treats xenobots as a compact lens on where AI, robotics, and biology meet. The opening segment frames the discussion with dated AI regulation, then the interview tracks a shift from simulation into living systems and back again, where observation and modeling…

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If you want a rebroadcast where AI regulation opens into xenobots research, press play.

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