“A huge data center that uses gigawatts of power does not grow out of a small integrated circuit.”
The Trajectory · AI Research & Frontier Labs · November 2026
Context
The host was contrasting how living things grow and develop from a seed with how machines are assembled from parts. Szostak, an origin-of-life researcher, finishes the thought with a line on how different AI's physical infrastructure is from biological growth.
Transcript
And if that's true and possible, and they can start redesigning their own internal structure. Yeah, maybe that's a path to consciousness and everything else. So it
…be the case, then maybe it would. That said, it would be so like if it were made of metal, et cetera, it would be so shatteringly different because you and I, you know, the oak tree comes out of the acorn, which is wild. The way you build a robot is you click the parts together. The way you unfurl.
A huge data center that uses gigawatts of power does not grow out of a small integrated circuit. No, it doesn't.
You bring the pieces in, you click them together, you fit them together, you plug it in, right? While if you cut off a lizard's leg, it grows back a leg exactly the same length with the veins in the right places and exactly the right number of fingers of exactly the right length. And so like…
It's very different, right? And yet, you know, this is also something that we are now starting to be able to manipulate. Okay, go on. We can manipulate our own genomes. We, you know, we'll have the capacity to, you know, manipulate our own evolution, to design in capabilities. And I think this is…
about machines manipulating their own design.
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