Not even very complex systems: up until very recently anything that exhibited more-than-merely-physical behavior was alive. The spinning governor, arguably the

Not even very complex systems: up until very recently anything that exhibited more-than-merely-physical behavior was alive. The spinning governor, arguably the first feedback-based machine, processing information, was described as "alive" and "making decisions" by contemporary observers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor Line-following robots, as simple as they are, appear alive. Nothing like this existed in the world other than living things until the last ~250 years.