They sometimes put "organism" in quotes, which I think is important. A far as I can tell, these aren't bona fide organisms, but appropriated tissue that has been treated in some way to incidentally behave in useful ways, sort of like if I sliced out your bicep and modified it somehow to flap about and therefore "walk" across the room.
An intriguing idea is what if we don't need to directly solve general artificial intelligence, but instead use standard AI to design and create biological life that is generally intelligent for some domain.
