It was recently found (I can’t find the article at the moment) that robots were demonstrated to “evolve.” They were given simple instructions to seek out resources and avoid pitfalls. They would constantly be destroyed and remade to continue the same goal. Eventually, they developed their own technique to fool other robots away from their resources, with no programmer causing it.
I’m inclined to believe that things naturally come alive just because they are randomly prone to. Complex chain reactions simply turn into a pattern which can eventually generate new chain reactions. It is possible, perhaps, that there are mysterious events in the cosmos which makes the difference between dead and alive. That it animates things once the opportunity is found. That it’s not just a random bunch of chain reactions.
When I think of artificial intelligence- it’s not that human beings are making living things, but possibly giving nature new opportunities to animate things. We can learn to make the necessary conditions for anima. But we ourselves don’t really create life.
I assert that we don’t have to think of life as this static thing that has to exist in one state or another. We have moral responsability to desire its continuance, but in what form-- does it really matter? Life can continue as it desires. Wheather it is an evolutionary augmented human, a genetically engineered cyber-enhanced colony of creatures, or a 20-generation ASIMO progeny.