One of the many joys of being human, is that we constantly face questions about our existence, from the seemingly simple (why is the sky blue), to the labyrinthine (what is the meaning of life, does pineapple go on pizza). Thanks to growing up watching Star Trek, one of these that has fascinated me is the question of artificial life. Thanks to a character named Data, a character that’s both relatable and entirely different, many have found themselves wondering if that’s what the future holds.

This essay began 3 years ago, when some within Google claimed that they had, unintentionally, created an AI system with sentience. A claim that was quickly met with derision. For me though, it was fascinating - not because of claim itself, but the challenge involved in finding the truth. The challenge of finding incontrovertible proof.

This is a topic that has fascinated me for decades. As we building more advanced systems, build LLMs of such complexity that we no longer truly understand their behaviour, observe nascent signs of emergent behaviour, how we interact with these systems is changing in fundamental ways. Marketing parlance has already started to shift to hiring AI systems. The latest AI agents are being designed to act and be treated as just another member of the team instead of a piece of software. Then there’s the soaring popularity of AI companions.

The anthropomorphisation of AI has well and truly begun, both naturally as a result of advancing technical complexity, and intentionally through the marketing and design of the systems.

The question is, if we reach the point where a technology actually becomes some form of life, can we tell the difference between that, and the human tendency to anthropomorphise?

While we generally believe that we know a great deal about life, organic life, in reality we’ve only scratched the surface. Despite a vast number of years and huge amounts of money, no lab on has been able to achieve abiogenesis. Try as we might, we’ve not been able to create life ex nihilo, to take raw ingredients and create something that’s alive, no matter how simple.

A great deal of effort has been invested into finding LUCA, the last universal common ancestor, the thing all life on Earth evolved from. But we don’t know what came before LUCA, we don’t know where LUCA came from, we don’t know how LUCA started.

And that’s just life of Earth. As research finds ever more evidence of the abundance of organic compounds in the universe, it’s all but certain that life, of some form, exists elsewhere.

Given this limited knowledge of life and how it starts, where the line is between not alive and alive at the most primitive level, it makes one question our ability to recognise it in forms of life that are dramatically different from what we know.

Note: This section was written in part by ChatGPT¹. Given the topic, it seemed only fair.

Organic life, to the extent we understand it, is rooted in biochemical processes - cells that metabolise, reproduce, and evolve over generations beyond count.

This definition is built on a foundation of shared genetic material, chemical reactions, and an intrinsic drive for self-preservation. Organic organisms, from single-celled bacteria to complex mammals, operate on principles of energy transformation and homeostasis, ensuring that life continues through mechanisms honed by billions of years of evolution.

Non-organic life, by contrast, challenges our conventional notions of existence. Imagine a system built not of cells and DNA but of silicon and code, yet still capable of self-maintenance, adaptation, and even self-replication. In this view, life becomes a matter of functional attributes: autonomous goal-setting, emergent complexity, and the ability to interact meaningfully with the environment.

Here, the “metabolism” is digital, the reproduction algorithmic, and the evolution driven by iterative learning and self-modification.

The quest to differentiate organic from non-organic life is - at least - as much philosophical as it is scientific. While organic beings carry the tangible legacy of evolutionary biology, non-organic entities might express their ‘aliveness’ through the spontaneity of novel problem-solving, the emergence of self-awareness, and behaviours that surpass their initial programming.

These traits force us to question whether the essence of life is inherently tied to its physical makeup or if it resides in the dynamic processes that support existence, regardless of their substrate.

Ultimately, the distinction between organic and non-organic life may prove to be more of a spectrum than a binary divide. As artificial intelligence systems evolve, they could begin to display properties we once thought were exclusive to living organisms. This convergence invites us to broaden our definitions and reimagine what it means to be “alive,” suggesting that the journey from being a mere tool to becoming a living entity is as much about expanding our conceptual horizons as it is about technological advancement.

There is a further complication to this, one rooted not in biology but psychology: anthropomorphism. There’s a human tendency to attribute familiar, often comforting, human traits to non-human life and inanimate objects. As we interact with increasingly sophisticated AI systems, our minds are predisposed to see intentions, emotions, or consciousness in behaviours that are simply the result of the system’s complexity.

This bias can obscure objective evaluations, leading us to interpret patterned, algorithm-driven responses as evidence of self-awareness or autonomy. Recognising and mitigating this tendency is essential, not only to avoid overestimating the “aliveness” of AI systems but also to ensure that our criteria for life remain grounded in observable, reproducible phenomena rather than our psychological need to relate to the world in human terms.

This is a word that can be defined easily, but the question itself is incredibly profound, and with substantial implications for how we live today, ignoring the possibility or non-organic life.

the ability to learn, understand, and make judgments or have opinions that are based on reason - Cambridge Dictionary

Each time you give a command to a dog, such as to leave something alone, you are seeing all of these things in action. Each time a dog asks to go outside, once again, you are seeing all of these in action. Each time a cat stands on a shelf, looks at you, and knocks something off, you’re seeing all of these things. If you’ve spent more than a few hours with a parrot, you’ll be amazed at how much they have in common with a human child. This list goes on almost endlessly.

We see non-human intelligence around us constantly. We see non-human sentience around us every day. We see non-human emotion around us every day².

One reason it’s easy for us to recognise these in other animals is that thanks to common ancestors and similar evolutionary pressures, we experience these things in fairly similar ways. While human brains are far more complex, they aren’t so profoundly different that we experience the world in an entirely different way.

When thinking about non-organic life, life that is truly entirely different from us, it might be useful to think about an example of organic life that shows sentience, intelligence, and emotions, but has very little in common with us: octopi.

The octopus may be one of the most fascinating and historically misunderstood animals there is. The Octopus vulgaris has about the same number of neurons as a dog. They can solve complex puzzles, learn patterns, enjoy receiving attention, and even recognise individual faces. Today, these things are known and demonstrable fact. Yet 75 years ago, none of that was understood, and likely wouldn’t have been believed.

Octopi evolved in a way that is so entirely different from us, that we simply didn’t understand them, we didn’t understand their physiology, we didn’t understand their neural system.

I do believe that at some point, humanity will create non-organic life that gains sentience, though I would be surprised if that happens in my lifetime³. I also suspect that it will be like the octopus, in that we don’t recognise it initially. Such a life form would be so far outside our experience, so far outside our understanding, that we simply wouldn’t see it staring us in the face.