Bringing a forest into a preschool for Health: Can AI be called a “Life form”?

AFAIK, LLMs and other versions of AI don’t come in “organic” versions, and this may continue to be a bridge too far for thinking AI is a lifeform. In a scientific sense, “organic” means “contains Carbon compounds”..as in “organic chemistry”.

There are no known forms of life on Earth that are not organic-chemistry-based. Every living cell—from bacteria in deep-sea vents to trees and humans—uses carbon as its structural and reactive core.

Can we call AI “life” if it isn’t organic chemistry based?

Reputable speculation exists that life in other locations in the universe…might not be the carbon based forms we know about. One could take that a step further and say, just because the only forms of life on earth are carbon based, that doesn’t rule out other forms of life existing at some point on the Earth. Such as forms of AI that exhibit behaviors that we are tempted to call “living”.

• Silicon-based life: Silicon can also form four bonds, but its chemistry is less flexible; silicon chains are unstable in water, so this seems unlikely on Earth but might occur in non-aqueous environments (like hypothetical life on Titan).

• Ammonia- or methane-based life: Some theories propose solvents other than water could support biochemistry, though nothing like this exists here.

• Metal-oxide or plasma-based life: purely speculative ideas for extreme environments (e.g., inside stars or on neutron stars).

Would that include complex ecologies such as the below preschool is attempting to make part of a “learning environment?

How much organic life do we need to be in contact with or immersed in for health?

(Yes confusingly there’s another “organic” word we use in many spots in a grocery store… describing food stuffs that are grown with more complex ecologies and fewer “artificial chemicals”. That “organic” word doesn’t mean “carbon based”.)

Yet there’s an odd overlap here, in that growing organic life (such as humans) in a rich complex ecology is thought to aid overall human health. And again, we need to know if AI can similarly create and support such a complex ecology, whether based on carbon or not.