Can Robots and Humans Make Babies Together?

Abstract

This talk gives a guided tour of the advances achieved by researchers in cell biology and biorobotics, which prompted the question whether it is possible for humans and robots to make babies together. Until the birth of the first test tube baby, it was believed that a human baby could only be conceived by the means of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman. A series of breakthroughs in stem cell research, such as the frog experiments done by John Gurdon, the ability to reprogram cells, the creation of embryos from skin cells, as well as the TNT technology, has proven once and again that life can be created by the genetic engineering of human cells. This talk also looks into the genetic robot, created from a set of computerized DNA codes that determine its personality. It is possible for such genetic codes from a robot to be combined with human cells to create a baby that has genetic information from both a human and a robot. The talk concludes by discussing the ethical implications related to the genetic engineering of human embryos.