It is not news that a man made a robot

Artificial intelligence and robotics have already made a profound difference medicine, from analysis of recordings and diagnostics, to surgical rooms in which robotic hands perform precise operations. The robot is capable of skillful handling, in micrometers, which with the assistance of a good doctor raises the quality of each operation to the level of practically excluding manual error. But here the robot is just a tool, precise, but still a tool.

Now the question is whether a robot can create a human using a sperm and an egg cell. You guessed the answer. It can.

According to the Washington Post, a pioneering program is being implemented in Mexico City in which AI and robotic systems perform the bulk of the procedure. in vitro fertilization (IVF), a process that until now was almost entirely manual and depended on the experience of individual embryologists.

In traditional IVF, specialists hand-pick the most capable sperm, use pipettes and microscopes to inject them into the egg, and monitor every step of the embryo's development. There are always individuals who are particularly "lucky hands". Even so, the success rate is about 50 percent at best.

VI systems now take over 205 manual steps: they identify the healthiest sperm using algorithms similar to those used in self-driving cars to detect obstacles, prepare the egg, and use a robotic arm to perform a precise sperm injection. Success rates are significantly better. In the mentioned Mexican clinic, the system has already participated in the conception of at least 20 babies.

The need for such innovations is huge. According to World Health Organization, every sixth couple of reproductive age struggles with infertility. Automation promises to make the procedure cheaper, faster and more accessible. If the global demand were met, 20 million more babies would be born annually because those who currently do not even think of trying because of the high costs would appear. The current estimate is that about 13 million babies conceived through artificial insemination are now born each year. It should also be said that this kind of clinic could not work in the USA or the EU because the laws there forbid it. Still.

So, after 45 years, we have gone from a test tube baby to an algorithm baby. What once looked like "playing God" is now seen by many as "God's tool". Medicine seems to be entering an era where the creation of life will be increasingly in the hands of machines. Precise, programmed and more successful than the vast majority of doctors.

This is where we come to the next dilemma. If scientific progress creates an incubator in which the human organism can develop practically from conception to full readiness for the outside world, the entire process of creating a human could be in the hands of machines. If they have the basic material, the machines could produce a human from it, even fine-tune his genetic material to perfection. Entire "people factories" could be created, and in an even worse scenario, the people created in such factories would provide material for the production of new people, the circle would be closed.

Why would anyone do that if they can make a robot with fewer needs and able to work right away, unlike a human who has to grow up and learn? Let's say, because a robot is not a consumer and for a long time (or never) it will not have the intelligence of a human, not even one produced in a factory. And the consumer is necessary for the economy.

Perhaps this thesis is exaggerated, but it is hard to resist it when you know that artificial intelligence can already initiate conception and that it is only a matter of time before it will be able to carry out an entire pregnancy with a higher success rate than human beings. Whether we want to live in a world of such possibilities is a question for which it is probably too late.

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