5 ms·

Artificial womb facility concept for 30k babies per year

25 points by DocFeind 4y ago

tjpnz 4y ago
There's an awful lot here about renewable energy, AI, screens and phone apps but virtually nothing about how this could possibly work from a biological or even practical perspective.
- themanmaran 4y ago
  It's more of "here's a cool sci fi concept and some vfx to go with it". Strange to me how it's being pitched almost like it's a funded startup or something.
- bobtheowl2 4y ago
  It's as if they made the article with ChatGPT
yulaow 4y ago
I mean... cool but that's not addressing the problem at all (which is that having kids is too costly and risky right now, we have negligible infertility issues instead) because to pay for this you probably would have to pay far more than needed to allow current fertile population to have kids "the standard way", which needs: social support, controlled house prices and paternal/maternal pay leave. In this case instead you would have to pay not only for the whole "babies farm" (which sounds extremely costly) but then also to grow and educate every single kid at least for 18-22 years without real parents/community. It sounds like making the solution even worse than the problem.
- blarghyblarg 4y ago
  It's not even a solution for the problem. Making the baby is super easy, being pregnant is relatively easy compared to raising the kid, having the kid is pretty difficult for a day or two then you've got a few weeks of recovery. The hard part comes in the following 5-10 years.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    40-50 years if you are in the unlucky 1-5% and have a child with a severe developmental issue. The chances are low, lower if it's legal to do an abortion on a fetus with the associated markers, but they're still there. Parents may never not have a child to care for, one who can not reciprocate in their later years.
- FpUser 4y ago
  >"It sounds like making the solution even worse than the problem." But then government gets to bend babies any way they like. I hope baby farms will never come to existence.
  - mcculley 4y ago
    I don't see how it is anything other than inevitable. Religions, governments, other organizations/entities have a lot of reasons and not all will be prevented from doing so.
  - lo_zamoyski 4y ago
    The essential problem of modification isn't who is tailoring people, but that anyone at all is tailoring people. It legitimizes the notion that human beings can be made subject to the wills and desires of others in the manner of an instrument. It's the same moral stance that enabled chattel slavery, but worse. Much worse. The idea is just reheated science fiction, but the underlying hubris, and resulting moral blindness, is even older.
    - FpUser 4y ago
      >"but that anyone at all is tailoring people" From what I know "untailored" people do not develop into anything meaningful on their own.
- themanmaran 4y ago
  Yea I think the problem is not the inability to produce babies, but rather the high cost required to raise them in stable households (education, healthcare, opportunities).
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    It is certainly high cost for the woman to produce a baby. I would not want to put my body through what my wife put hers through.
    - sshine 4y ago
      If I could alleviate my wife of the pain and risks associated with childbirth, I'd do it. But it seems that nature has some division of responsibilities cut out for us.
- finemike 4y ago
  Even with additional costs it'll still be beneficial in form of lowered birth trauma and death. Also, mother will be able to work for the whole period and pay for it.
  - iso1631 4y ago
    Mothers tend to work fine for the first 30-35 weeks of a pregnancy
  - leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
    Talk about dystopian. This is some Brave New World stuff. Can we look at the separation of human biology/human nature and ask ourselves what happens when we cut out the reason of human existence for the history of humanity, or even the drive of every living organism to procreate? There are things that happen to women when they grow and give birth to children. What happens when we remove that? And will governments "fix" the human depopulation crisis the by growing children in vats and having the state raise them?
    - midoridensha 4y ago
      >And will governments "fix" the human depopulation crisis the by growing children in vats and having the state raise them? What's your alternative to this problem? >or even the drive of every living organism to procreate? Judging by current birthrates in developed nations, that drive isn't very strong in modern humans. >There are things that happen to women when they grow and give birth to children. What happens when we remove that? Women lead better lives overall?
- soderfoo 4y ago
  It's almost comically sad, the misalignment of solutions and problems.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  We already have government institutions for educating kids, called "schools". We just need to expand these institutions' roles so they including all the parts of housing and raising children until they're adults. It could done far more efficiently than by relying on unpaid volunteers, and paid for with much higher taxes (people won't need money for big houses and raising kids any more when the State takes over this role). Honestly, I don't see how this solution could possibly be worse than the only viable alternative, which is to simply accept a sharply shrinking population and sit around and wring our hands about how no one wants to have kids any more.
vfistri2 4y ago
even though intentions are noble it awfully reminds me of matrix scenes
DRAGONERO 4y ago
Is the Matrix resemblance on purpose?
hunglee2 4y ago
an inevitable future, the sooner we embrace this concept the better. In fact, lab grown humans may be the only humane way to reverse the population decline which seems to track with economic development
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Why would this be the solution? Global infertility isn’t the primary cause of people declining to have children.
- tgv 4y ago
  It also correlates positively with resource consumption.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    People don't need to consume resources the wasteful way they do today. People don't need to live like Americans with SUVs and giant McMansions with wasteful yards.
- rubyfan 4y ago
  I am curious why you think reversing population decline is desirable?
- chii 4y ago
  it might be that as tech and economy move towards more automation, there'd be fewer and fewer need for large numbers of humans for labour.
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    If you want innovation and a human society that's advancing rather than stagnating, you need a large population, not one that's rapidly shrinking. You're not going to get a society where everyone is super-smart and highly productive, at least without genetic engineering making humans into something they currently aren't. It takes a lot of people to get innovation, because only a tiny fraction of the population creates any innovation (and many innovations come from people who only create that one notable thing). The way things are going, eventually there just won't be any humans, only automation serving an extinct society.
tgv 4y ago
This is a pastiche, right? Because the buzzwords ... they're frightening. Which sane person's first thought when considering an artificial baby factory is "Is there an app"?
sfusato 4y ago
I saw fields, endless fields, Neo, where human beings are no longer born... we are grown.
bobmichael 4y ago
Brave New World IRL.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  yes the book was first
aw4y 4y ago
it's Brave New World by Huxley
ekianjo 4y ago
Someone watched too much Matrix
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago
  Or read too much of Yuval Harari.
murillians 4y ago
are there any more details about this or is there just some futurology clickbait at the top of HN?
- elil17 4y ago
  Scientists have developed artificial wombs, although they are fairly limited right now. They supported a premature lamb fetus from the late 2nd trimester for four weeks in an artificial womb until it could be kept alive by traditional neonatal care. The lambs did not have the lung or brain damage characteristic of extremely premature births. https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/25/15421734/artificial-womb-fetus-biobag-uterus-lamb-sheep-birth-premie-preterm-infant https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/25/15421734/artificial-womb-... https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112
gene-h 4y ago
By concept, they mean concept art. There is no technical information to back this up. The technology to do such things as using a" delicate layer of engineered enzymes, [to] recycle waste products" is pretty far away.
krona 4y ago
I guess Amazon will never need to solve its fully automated robotic warehouse problem. Brave New World here we come.
MarkusWandel 4y ago
But is that actually invented, i.e. does it work? It reminds me of the Korea segment of "Cloud Atlas", but that's sci-fi. My understanding is that "artificial womb" is nowhere near a solved problem, scientifically.
- amelius 4y ago
  Probably VC-bait.
h2odragon 4y ago
I expect real efforts in this space to focus on livestock first. "Cloning humans" is going to be clickbait for a long time yet.
- thatguy0900 4y ago
  Or at least focus on rich people designer babies with bespoke traits first
turnsout 4y ago
In case anyone is wondering whether this is a real project: this is literally just science fiction. It's a design concept imagining a potential future, with zero intention to productize.
SuperFine 4y ago
This is someone's homework project for a 3D modeling course, right?
thenerdhead 4y ago
"Hatchery and Conditioning Centre" is a very Brave New World concept. Huxley continues to be ahead of his time.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  The guy was an unwitting visionary of a truly utopian future. He didn't even like the world he created, even though in every metric it's a far more desirable world to live in than our own.
MikeDelta 4y ago
Not impressed, sounds like a rehashed vc idea. If they really want to solve a problem, look at the declining fertility rates in the world. Growth in the womb is the last phase of a very tough yourney. No need to have such vast farms if there is nothing to grow.
riddleronroof 4y ago
Is this even real?
instaclay 4y ago
This is a piece of art (satire) that explores a concept as a sci-fi world-building exercise. Not a proposal or something actual. Worldbuilding Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/zgursc/ectolife_the_worlds_first_artificial_womb_facility/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/zgursc/ectol... Original blog post (This is a satire site) https://scienceandstuff.com/ectolife-artificial-wombs/ https://scienceandstuff.com/ectolife-artificial-wombs/
topheroo 4y ago
This has to be parody, right?
Cheyana 4y ago
This concept was explored in the movie Man of Steel, where Krypton had outlawed live births but I forget the reason why. They called it the Genesis Chamber. https://youtu.be/yhwV6ekluWU?t=96 https://youtu.be/yhwV6ekluWU?t=96
- midoridensha 4y ago
  That movie was such a huge disappointment. It had a lot of potential, and some great FX and some great acting talent, but the movie overall was really quite terrible.

25 points by DocFeind 4y ago

There's an awful lot here about renewable energy, AI, screens and phone apps but virtually nothing about how this could possibly work from a biological or even practical perspective.

themanmaran 4y ago
It's more of "here's a cool sci fi concept and some vfx to go with it". Strange to me how it's being pitched almost like it's a funded startup or something.
bobtheowl2 4y ago
It's as if they made the article with ChatGPT

yulaow 4y ago

I mean... cool but that's not addressing the problem at all (which is that having kids is too costly and risky right now, we have negligible infertility issues instead) because to pay for this you probably would have to pay far more than needed to allow current fertile population to have kids "the standard way", which needs: social support, controlled house prices and paternal/maternal pay leave. In this case instead you would have to pay not only for the whole "babies farm" (which sounds extremely costly) but then also to grow and educate every single kid at least for 18-22 years without real parents/community. It sounds like making the solution even worse than the problem.

blarghyblarg 4y ago
It's not even a solution for the problem. Making the baby is super easy, being pregnant is relatively easy compared to raising the kid, having the kid is pretty difficult for a day or two then you've got a few weeks of recovery. The hard part comes in the following 5-10 years.
- falcolas 4y ago
  40-50 years if you are in the unlucky 1-5% and have a child with a severe developmental issue. The chances are low, lower if it's legal to do an abortion on a fetus with the associated markers, but they're still there. Parents may never not have a child to care for, one who can not reciprocate in their later years.
FpUser 4y ago
>"It sounds like making the solution even worse than the problem." But then government gets to bend babies any way they like. I hope baby farms will never come to existence.
- mcculley 4y ago
  I don't see how it is anything other than inevitable. Religions, governments, other organizations/entities have a lot of reasons and not all will be prevented from doing so.
- lo_zamoyski 4y ago
  The essential problem of modification isn't who is tailoring people, but that anyone at all is tailoring people. It legitimizes the notion that human beings can be made subject to the wills and desires of others in the manner of an instrument. It's the same moral stance that enabled chattel slavery, but worse. Much worse. The idea is just reheated science fiction, but the underlying hubris, and resulting moral blindness, is even older.
  - FpUser 4y ago
    >"but that anyone at all is tailoring people" From what I know "untailored" people do not develop into anything meaningful on their own.
themanmaran 4y ago
Yea I think the problem is not the inability to produce babies, but rather the high cost required to raise them in stable households (education, healthcare, opportunities).
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  It is certainly high cost for the woman to produce a baby. I would not want to put my body through what my wife put hers through.
  - sshine 4y ago
    If I could alleviate my wife of the pain and risks associated with childbirth, I'd do it. But it seems that nature has some division of responsibilities cut out for us.
finemike 4y ago
Even with additional costs it'll still be beneficial in form of lowered birth trauma and death. Also, mother will be able to work for the whole period and pay for it.
- iso1631 4y ago
  Mothers tend to work fine for the first 30-35 weeks of a pregnancy
- leeroyjenkins11 4y ago
  Talk about dystopian. This is some Brave New World stuff. Can we look at the separation of human biology/human nature and ask ourselves what happens when we cut out the reason of human existence for the history of humanity, or even the drive of every living organism to procreate? There are things that happen to women when they grow and give birth to children. What happens when we remove that? And will governments "fix" the human depopulation crisis the by growing children in vats and having the state raise them?
  - midoridensha 4y ago
    >And will governments "fix" the human depopulation crisis the by growing children in vats and having the state raise them? What's your alternative to this problem? >or even the drive of every living organism to procreate? Judging by current birthrates in developed nations, that drive isn't very strong in modern humans. >There are things that happen to women when they grow and give birth to children. What happens when we remove that? Women lead better lives overall?
soderfoo 4y ago
It's almost comically sad, the misalignment of solutions and problems.
midoridensha 4y ago
We already have government institutions for educating kids, called "schools". We just need to expand these institutions' roles so they including all the parts of housing and raising children until they're adults. It could done far more efficiently than by relying on unpaid volunteers, and paid for with much higher taxes (people won't need money for big houses and raising kids any more when the State takes over this role). Honestly, I don't see how this solution could possibly be worse than the only viable alternative, which is to simply accept a sharply shrinking population and sit around and wring our hands about how no one wants to have kids any more.

vfistri2 4y ago

even though intentions are noble it awfully reminds me of matrix scenes

DRAGONERO 4y ago

Is the Matrix resemblance on purpose?

hunglee2 4y ago

an inevitable future, the sooner we embrace this concept the better. In fact, lab grown humans may be the only humane way to reverse the population decline which seems to track with economic development

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
endisneigh 4y ago
Why would this be the solution? Global infertility isn’t the primary cause of people declining to have children.
tgv 4y ago
It also correlates positively with resource consumption.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  People don't need to consume resources the wasteful way they do today. People don't need to live like Americans with SUVs and giant McMansions with wasteful yards.
rubyfan 4y ago
I am curious why you think reversing population decline is desirable?
chii 4y ago
it might be that as tech and economy move towards more automation, there'd be fewer and fewer need for large numbers of humans for labour.
- midoridensha 4y ago
  If you want innovation and a human society that's advancing rather than stagnating, you need a large population, not one that's rapidly shrinking. You're not going to get a society where everyone is super-smart and highly productive, at least without genetic engineering making humans into something they currently aren't. It takes a lot of people to get innovation, because only a tiny fraction of the population creates any innovation (and many innovations come from people who only create that one notable thing). The way things are going, eventually there just won't be any humans, only automation serving an extinct society.

tgv 4y ago

This is a pastiche, right? Because the buzzwords ... they're frightening. Which sane person's first thought when considering an artificial baby factory is "Is there an app"?

sfusato 4y ago

I saw fields, endless fields, Neo, where human beings are no longer born... we are grown.

bobmichael 4y ago

Brave New World IRL.

ekianjo 4y ago
yes the book was first

aw4y 4y ago

it's Brave New World by Huxley

ekianjo 4y ago

Someone watched too much Matrix

lo_zamoyski 4y ago
Or read too much of Yuval Harari.

murillians 4y ago

are there any more details about this or is there just some futurology clickbait at the top of HN?

elil17 4y ago
Scientists have developed artificial wombs, although they are fairly limited right now. They supported a premature lamb fetus from the late 2nd trimester for four weeks in an artificial womb until it could be kept alive by traditional neonatal care. The lambs did not have the lung or brain damage characteristic of extremely premature births. https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/25/15421734/artificial-womb-fetus-biobag-uterus-lamb-sheep-birth-premie-preterm-infant https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/25/15421734/artificial-womb-... https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15112

gene-h 4y ago

By concept, they mean concept art. There is no technical information to back this up. The technology to do such things as using a" delicate layer of engineered enzymes, [to] recycle waste products" is pretty far away.

krona 4y ago

I guess Amazon will never need to solve its fully automated robotic warehouse problem. Brave New World here we come.

MarkusWandel 4y ago

But is that actually invented, i.e. does it work? It reminds me of the Korea segment of "Cloud Atlas", but that's sci-fi. My understanding is that "artificial womb" is nowhere near a solved problem, scientifically.

amelius 4y ago
Probably VC-bait.

h2odragon 4y ago

I expect real efforts in this space to focus on livestock first. "Cloning humans" is going to be clickbait for a long time yet.

thatguy0900 4y ago
Or at least focus on rich people designer babies with bespoke traits first

turnsout 4y ago

In case anyone is wondering whether this is a real project: this is literally just science fiction. It's a design concept imagining a potential future, with zero intention to productize.

SuperFine 4y ago

This is someone's homework project for a 3D modeling course, right?

thenerdhead 4y ago

"Hatchery and Conditioning Centre" is a very Brave New World concept. Huxley continues to be ahead of his time.

midoridensha 4y ago
The guy was an unwitting visionary of a truly utopian future. He didn't even like the world he created, even though in every metric it's a far more desirable world to live in than our own.

MikeDelta 4y ago

Not impressed, sounds like a rehashed vc idea. If they really want to solve a problem, look at the declining fertility rates in the world. Growth in the womb is the last phase of a very tough yourney. No need to have such vast farms if there is nothing to grow.

riddleronroof 4y ago

Is this even real?

instaclay 4y ago

This is a piece of art (satire) that explores a concept as a sci-fi world-building exercise. Not a proposal or something actual. Worldbuilding Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/zgursc/ectolife_the_worlds_first_artificial_womb_facility/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/zgursc/ectol... Original blog post (This is a satire site) https://scienceandstuff.com/ectolife-artificial-wombs/ https://scienceandstuff.com/ectolife-artificial-wombs/

topheroo 4y ago

This has to be parody, right?

Cheyana 4y ago

This concept was explored in the movie Man of Steel, where Krypton had outlawed live births but I forget the reason why. They called it the Genesis Chamber. https://youtu.be/yhwV6ekluWU?t=96 https://youtu.be/yhwV6ekluWU?t=96

midoridensha 4y ago
That movie was such a huge disappointment. It had a lot of potential, and some great FX and some great acting talent, but the movie overall was really quite terrible.