If the last few decades of progress in artificial intelligence and in molecular biology hooked up, their love child – a class of life unlike anything that has ever lived – might resemble the dark specks doing lazy laps around a petri dish in a laboratory at Tufts University in Massachusetts.

Douglas Blackiston, a biologist, points to one just a little wider than a human hair; squint, and you can just tell it is moving. But under a microscope, the blob races up and to the left. "He's a lighter ..." Blackiston says, then catches himself. "It's a lighter colour."