Slashdot Mirror
Guidelines For Nanotech Safety
aibrahim writes "The Foresight Institute has released its guidelines on molecular nanotechnology. Background information on the dangers from Engines of Creation in the chapters Engines of Destruction and Strategies of Survival. The document describes how to deal with the dangers of the coming nanotech revolution. Among the reccomendations: making the nanodevices dependent on external factors, such as artificial "vitamins" and industry self-regulation. The guidelines were cosponsored with the Institute of Molecular Manufacturing. So, is it enough ? Is it too much ? What measures should be taken to secure our safety during the nanotech revolution?" The Foresight Institute sounds like hubris, but it's got a masthead that fairly drips with smart people, like Stewart Brand and Marvin Minsky. Remind anyone of Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?
Sure, it limits a lot of the practical use of nanotechs, but since this is a new technology proceed carefully. Give them 20 years testing and using nanotechs in inert gas before you think about deploying them in environments containing oxygene, that way they have real world tests of how well nanotech's work and how likely they are to run away.
It seems like a good compromise to me.....
When I was able to do my own spam-armoring, you got a chance to email me. Now you can only hope I see your reply.
Even if Joy were still a relevant figure in the computer industry nowadays, he still wouldn't be qualified to talk about "the dangers of nanotech" and what we should do about them. His ridiculous article (published on Wired, even!) made that painfully evident.
Richard Feynman once said something to the effect that a scientist is usually just as wrong on non-scientific matters as a non-scientist. The same applies here. The idea that we should mind Bill Joy's crazed rant on nanotech (as opposed to Joe Q. Public's crazed rant on nanotech) just because he's Bill Joy (as opposed to being Joe Q. Public) is a logical fallacy: a clear case of the argument from authority gone haywire.
Ah well.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
People theoretically see the need for lots of nice protections. Then they go ahead and cut corners unless someone has been burned and the memory is fresh.
I cannot think of any area of technology from automobile design to nuclear power plants to office suites where this principle of human nature has not been operational. I can personally list examples from NASA to genetics research to the SNMP spec. (It was nicknamed Security - Not My Problem for a reason!)
IMNSHO anyone who thinks that nano has the potential to be any different is just kidding themselves about human nature...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
It looks like everyone has already brought up the point that the danger in putting a "self-destruct" mechanism in a nanite. With millions or billions of nanites, even if the odds of one of them surviving that self-destruction are one in a million, those odds are too high. And if that nanite is designed to construct other nanites (or, worst case, copies of itself) then you have a problem on your hands.
If nanotechnology ever reaches the total control of matter, self-replicating machine, Diamond Age "Seed" level (I don't have enough information to argue either way, but it seems to me that it'd be easier to create macroscopic Von Neumann machines than microscopic ones, and we haven't even done that yet) we're going to need more protection than a self destruct mechanism.
What I'd like to see, in a world swarming with potential nanotech viruses, is an analogous nanotech immune system to take care of them, nanites which can be set to recognize and rip apart other nanites which meet certain parameters. Got a rogue oil-spill cleaning nanite ripping up asphalt in San Francisco? Get the standby security nanites in Oakland to kill it.
There was an interview with a somewhat apocalyptic tech giant (a veep at Sun? I forget) who believed that the ever increasing technological power available to humanity (nanotech, biotech, and AI being three examples I remember) would cause the world to be ripped apart by terrorism in the coming century. He likened it to an airplane in which every passenger had a "Crash" button in front of their seat, and only one psycho was necessary to bring everyone down with him.
I don't think it will be that way. With nanotechnology specifically, if our available defenses are kept up to the level that our potential offenses would require, then having a small set of nanites go rogue wouldn't be a concern; they would be overwhelmed by their surroundings. Going back to that analogy, if everybody had a "Crash" button in front of their airplane seat, but the plane was guaranteed to survive unless 50% of the passengers voted to crash, that would be the safest flight in history.