No, we cannot already create artificial lifeforms, and the reason we don’t create self-replicating systems is because we don’t know how (unless you mean somethi

No, we cannot already create artificial lifeforms, and the reason we don’t create self-replicating systems is because we don’t know how (unless you mean something like modifying viruses, but that’s not really us doing the hard part). It would be nice to think that a scientist in command of self-replicating artificial life technology will have the restraint to hold back on deploying it at scale. But if someone comes along and says “hey I made an artificial bacterium that can eat all the CO2 in the atmosphere, want me to replicate it globally?”, someone is going to push the button.