Comments on: Replicating nanofactories redux

By:

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:07:20 +0000

This big confuses me: nanofactories …. would obviate even the conceptual posibility of gray goo.

I readily stipulate the following: (1) nanofactories will be massively more efficient, (2) the story about the car foraging for tree sap reasonably describes the engineering challeng of designing a gray-goo-bot, (3) the difficulty of desiging a GGbot means it could never be designed or built accidentally, (4) there’s a fair chance that even a perfectly designed GGbot wouldn’t find enough energy (or find it quickly enough) to outcompete the bacteria and insects and other natural enemies it would encounter.

It’s still not impossible that some bad guy could undertake the design of a GGbot and could come up with something, if not universally destructive in the gray goo sense, at least destructive enough to make a lot of trouble. I don’t see how this theoretical possibility is affected in the slightest by the greater efficiency of nanofactories.

Is the idea that more efficient nanofactories give you an overwhelming advantage in the arms race against the bad guy? Very likely true, but he is still a big threat if he can act for a sufficient span of time before you’re not aware of his activities.

Am I missing something here?

By:

Sun, 10 May 2009 00:12:10 +0000

Actually, Messrs Hanson and Albus are not the only people to have considered various ramifications of these issues. Admittedly, the rest of us stumble along outside of the limelight, but we do contribute in our own meager fashion. I look forward to your next appearance of FFR Dr. Hall.

By:

Thu, 07 May 2009 00:57:54 +0000

Hello Josh and others, a few questions and comments about the above:
Didn’t Robert Bradbury also advice people, if they could, to purchase a piece of land preferably with abundant sunlight, for the same basic reason? So would you suggest someone buying say a plot of Mojave Desert land if they could, like a few acres? Your assemblers or nanosystems could then turn sunlight and the sand and dirt into consumer goods for you. How would you deal with the lack of water?

Secondly: A new book out called THE TRANSFORMERS and PHILOSOPHY has a whole chapter written by Josh Storrs Hall. Josh you did an EXCELLENT JOB! Thank you! I love how you describe some of the capabilities of robotics and nanotech and AI.

By: J. Storrs Hall

J. Storrs Hall — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:29:34 +0000

Actually we had both Albus and Hanson speaking about economic impacts at the AGI-09 Workshop on the Future of AGI. At the highest level of abstraction, they both said the same thing: people had better own capital, because a quarter-century from now (give or take), it’s going to be getting pretty hard to earn a living from labor.

You may consider Albus’ scheme to do that politically naive, but that doens’t make him a nutcase. Before retiring, he was one of the leading roboticists in the world.

By:

Tue, 05 May 2009 03:39:02 +0000

Personally, I’m significantly more concerned about the short term economic effects of these new technologies. Why am I concerned? Because we hear only two people talking about the economic impacts (Robin Hanson and James Albus… and James Albus is a lunatic) and only the nutcase is offering a solution.

By: JamesG

JamesG — Mon, 04 May 2009 14:06:01 +0000

Assemblers may not be the best approach to nanotech, but a nanofab unit could make assemblers or something like them since they build things atom by atom, right? So a malicious entity could unleach a malicious assembler on purpose then? More or less, ‘grey goo’ and still a threat. I’m in favor of making nanotech of whatever sort, it’s just becoming obvious to me that people are not going to have complete freedom to do what they want with these…