Like why can’t we recreate a synthetic physical body or body part? Like robots have such a hard time walking by themselves without a constrained set of programming and environment? Or that even keeping a heart beating outside of the is hard to do without a big machine to do all the work?
The best way I can explain is like why can’t we recreate the muscles/ Body part very well? Or at least mimic them in terms of function?
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It’s just hard. We don’t have the proper machines and materials to perfectly produce the exact organic tissues we want, in order to create an artificial object that functions exactly like the human body does. The body is so incredibly complex, and it is *produced* by the actions of trillions of microscopic cells, that allow for “work” in such tiny precise detail. We simply have no way of copying that level of precision, and certainly not with manmade tools made of plastic and metal.
The short answer is that biochemistry is just ridiculously complex.
Here’s an example that every biochemistry student has to learn known as the “[Krebs Cycle](https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2011/09/13/krebs_cycle-46b152fcf30abdad1e42cce4ded6e2d99d00f458-s900-c85.webp)”
This is how our bodies convert the energy from fatty acids, glucose, or amino acids to energy. It involves a repeating cycle of 9 different chemical compounds and multiple places where energy comes out and where the different energy sources can enter.
And this diagram doesn’t include the early steps of how those energy sources get into the Krebs cycle, nor does it include the final steps of how the compounds that come out of the krebs cycle are converted to energy, nor how that energy is converted to useful work.
And layered on top of all that are regulatory systems, so that if you are burning a lot of fatty acids or glucose the body will figure that out and get more of whatever is required out to the bloodstream to keep things going.
There has been an incredible amount of effort done to figure out how all of this works, but there are still a lot of holes and we aren’t close to being able to duplicate it with non-biological systems.
The two biggest obstacles are the miniature nature of a machine based replacement, and the fact they have to work reliably 24/7/365 for years at a time. We do have big machines that can temporarily replace many organs, but those are still short term solutions.
1. Mechanics are hard and still advancing – as much as I love the robo ‘dog’, that took an extreme level of work just to create something that wouldn’t fall over when walking.
2. robots have trouble recognizing the environment because it’s changing and odd and not within what it thinks it should be – see roombas getting stuck in odd locations, AI not recognizing handwriting, etc.
3. brains are ridiculously complicated. Like, ocular/eyes are at least partially processed near the back of the skull but are also flipped and that’s the thing that’s very very obvious (damage there, person can’t see). A lot of brain science is based on a very small amount of case studies because we only know what happens by poking at it (and stabbing someone’s brain is very rude).
4. Connecting to the brain thing, nerves are very complicated and those are the most basic part of the nervous system. So trying to connect all of the complications of the nervous system – the thing that actually lets you blink or move your hand – and try to connect it to something artificial uh…kinda requires more understanding than we currently have. We’re trying tho!
So yeah. Biology’s complicated, mechanical is supposed to be less but if we’re literally writing in instructions and building the thing ourselves without using genes as an intermediary and all the complications of trying to literally alter life and brain systems that we don’t understand and we really, really are having trouble with mere robots? Then yeah, poking at life means no true robo arms for a while longer.
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