Book Review: Novel Beings: Regulatory Approaches for a Future of New Intelligent Life

Creating life is nothing new. We do it all the time. Through reproduction, we let loose beings with a claim to moral consideration into the world. So, the generation of morally significant entities possessing intrinsic worth is nothing novel. But, as our biotechnological and computing capabilities increase, we take small yet ever-advancing steps towards the advent of lifeforms that, while distinct from us in construction and composition, have comparative, equal, or even enhanced claims to moral importance. This possibility, unsurprisingly, does create ethical conundrums.

In their edited collection, David R. Lawrence and Sarah Morley invite academics to consider how the development and advent of such ‘novel beings’ – ‘any entity created through artifice and which might warrant some degree of moral status and contingent protection’1 – should be managed from a regulatory perspective which, currently, according to Lawrence and Morley, is ill-equipped to deal with such a prospect.