EDIT: I now see you research these questions and so want to add a disclaimer that I have not thought about these things nearly as deeply as you probably have...
At first, I was thinking growing vs. building was just about the amount of labor involved to go from raw materials to final product. Then I realized this doesn’t work because under this definition a fully automated robot factory would qualify as growing a car.
My next best guess is that “growing” is related to:
the system containing its own description,
the system maintaining itself given “raw” materials, and
an aesthetic component that connects growing to things that look and feel biological.
In terms of KPIs, the first things that come to mind are metrics like:
How small a seed can the system bootstrap itself from given raw materials and otherwise little to no outside intervention?
EDIT: I now see you research these questions and so want to add a disclaimer that I have not thought about these things nearly as deeply as you probably have...
Epistemic status: very speculative.
Cool post, I’ve long been fond of the, likely less difficult, thought experiment of whether we can grow a house using synthetic biology.
At first, I was thinking growing vs. building was just about the amount of labor involved to go from raw materials to final product. Then I realized this doesn’t work because under this definition a fully automated robot factory would qualify as growing a car.
My next best guess is that “growing” is related to:
the system containing its own description,
the system maintaining itself given “raw” materials, and
an aesthetic component that connects growing to things that look and feel biological.
In terms of KPIs, the first things that come to mind are metrics like:
How small a seed can the system bootstrap itself from given raw materials and otherwise little to no outside intervention?
Can the system repair itself when damaged?