A friend and I were having a discussion about what constitutes any one thing as being alive.

He gave the example of building a robot that lives in a wrecking yard and creates other robots from scrap parts, then leaving it for ten years. At some point the robots made would use parts of other fallen robots to create new robots and so on.

I argue that it does not constitute life simply because the robot does not learn and grow from it's experiences, but rather it does what it was told to do and passes that programming along the chain. It does not allow for the conquering of new tasks and "personal growth" therefore it is not "alive" in the conventional sense but merely is continuing it's program cycle.

What say you?