&gt; <i>There&#x27;s always been a question about whether a program is something alive or not since it intrinsically has some kind of autonomy at the very least, or it wouldn&#x27;t be a program.</i><p>Huh? A program, by definition, has <i>no</i> autonomy. Given its inputs, it performs the appropriate sequence of actions it has been programmed to perform. At no point is it governing its own behavior.<p>Can anybody name a single realizable program that exhibits autonomy?<p>Even machine learning algorithms, which adapt to their input, are deterministic and incapable of self-governance. Given identical initial conditions and inputs, the machine learning program will generate identical deterministic output.