Can Smartphones Be Alive? On Artificial Living Entities, Consciousness, and Ethics

Abstract

This paper evaluates smartphones against a previously proposed, theory-relative criterion for artificial aliveness and explores the implications of adopting that criterion. Modern smartphones integrate substantial computational power, rich sensor suites, persistent energy flows, and continuous interaction with their environments. This paper asks whether such devices could, in principle, be engineered to function as artificial living entities. Building on a previously proposed sufficiency condition for aliveness that requires sustained organization far from equilibrium and self-referential regulation of one’s own continued viability, we assess whether a smartphone-based system could meet these criteria. We examine whether the structural and functional characteristics commonly associated with biological organisms can be implemented using current smartphone hardware and software and find that this is largely feasible. We then analyze the additional requirements imposed by self-referential self-maintenance, including internal self-modeling, viability evaluation, embodied causal coupling, and persistence of identity over time. While these capabilities require substantial system-level integration and incremental development, no fundamental scientific or technological obstacles are identified. The paper further considers whether such an entity could be conscious, arguing that self-referential viability regulation alone does not imply consciousness and that the emergence of phenomenology remains unresolved. Finally, we argue that even in the absence of consciousness, such entities would challenge existing distinctions between tools and organisms and raise ethical questions about autonomy, intervention, and termination.