We're Doomed -- Robots can reproduce

This – THIS! – is the reason Victor Frankenstein refused to build a Bride for Frankenstein. Biological “robots” are now capable of reproduction

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/29/americas/xenobots-self-replicating-robots-scn/index.html

Of course they try to reassure us…

…but we’ve seen this movie before. The dinosaurs spontaneously change sex. One Alien tears the other apart and uses its acid blood to eat through the walls. Calvin the Martian slips into the conduits and escapes the lab.

I, for one, welcome our Pac Man-shaped Overlords.

Wait. What was the date Skynet first becomes self-aware?

Do you want Cylons? Because this is how you get Cylons!!

How many steps away from Grey Goop are we now?

Calling a modified lifeform a “robot” is really stretching the meaning of the word, enough that I’d say the media is trolling.

Time for a remake of The Stuff.

No doubt you’d prefer something like John Sladek’s Mechasm/The Reproductive System

From Wikipedia:

I note that these items are referenced in the Wikipedia page “Self Replicating Machines”, so it’s not all media hype.

You want doomed?
I know someone that is trying to breed cats with high intelligence and opposable thumbs.

How is this not just another form of cloning? Is the whole thing that you can supposedly program future xenobots to follow instructions? How is that different from training a domestic animal to do chores?

Fiction writers should use whatever words they like, but journalists should avoid words with connotations that will deceive their audience. This news is interesting enough without a deceptive use of “robot”. (I know it’s far too late to stop clickbaiting, but it’s still wrong. And this isn’t at all directed at you; I’m glad you posted the link.)

You funny.

There is a meme floating around the internet about condoms being manufactured by automated machines.
So: robots are actively preventing humans from reproducing.

Now, CalMeacham finds this item.

It’s a conspiracy!

Fine by me. Let them open their own damn cans of Fancy Feast.

It’s not a robot in any sense. It’s a cell culture. Cell cultures reproduce. It’s what they do; that’s old news.

I’m sure that the scientists working on these things have reason to be excited, but whatever reason that is, they utterly failed to convey it to the journalists who wrote the story.

What’s different about this, apparently, is that the cells are reproducing in an extremely weird and different way. They’re not simply dividing or conjugating or doing any of the usual things that constitute reproduction. What they’re doing is even stranger than the creature that reproduces by expelling its digestive tract.
I gather that this behavior was determined by whatever was done to culture these cells, essentially “programming” it, which is why the publicity refers to them as “robots”.

To say that these are just a cell culture reproducing , and that’s what cells do, is to pretty much miss the point, which is conveyed pretty well in the news releases.

This could bring a whole new meaning to the term “invasive exotics”.

For now, I’m more concerned about what’s reproducing in my shower stall.