Levin co-created xenobots: tiny novel lifeforms, designed by AI and composed of frog cells, which display surprising emergent capabilities, like self-replication and clearing microscopic debris—abilities those cells don’t exhibit in their natural biological context. His lab’s research provides some evidence for the idea that intelligent behavior—using some degree of ingenuity to achieve specific goals—emerges even in very simple biological and computational systems, including decades-old algorithms. It also provides an example of how the boundaries between a living thing and a machine could potentially blur.