Self-Replication and Self-Awareness
My approach involves genetically modifying yeast cells to follow the rules in Conway's Game of Life. It is possible to create a complete computer in the game and, by my approach, insert yeast cells in the memory with a Neural Net structure used in ChatGPT.. This game-embedded computer could talk to you, just like ChatGPT. "Say hello to my little friend". This gives a whole new meaning to "the bread of life" :-)
Apparently Google has found that self-replication can arise spontaneously although that excuse has failed for explaining various dating aftereffects :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_IWVZPmc-E&ab_channel=AntonPetrov
This spontaneously evolves to self-replicate and take over the environment. It has no external forces to simulate Darwin evolution so it is pretty primitive but it seems to be possible to reproduce in any language. Self-replicating behavior from random noise.
Constructing a mathematical theory of why self-replication happens will be interesting. Constructing a system that can be directed by Darwin competition will also be interesting. Forcing a system to evolve into a Neural Net structure would be an evolved ChatGPT. Evolving ChatGPT to be self-aware is probably a year away if it doesn't exist already.
We are probably a decade away from creating self-aware systems from nothing.
Research is such fun.