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The Law of Disassembly
An anonymous reader writes "Smalltimes has a story by Douglas Mulhall, author of Our Molecular Future, which discusses molecular nanotechnology (MNT) disassembly, and argues for what he calls the 'Law of Disassembly,' that 'every MNT product must be disassemblable by at least one [of several possible methods].' The article ends with some good suggestions for raising awareness of this important issue. Gratuitous quote: This is disturbingly reminiscent of "nuclear power will give us clean limitless energy, and don't worry, we'll deal with the byproducts later because we'll have the tools by then.""
A show (I think it was on the History Channel) about nano-technology. It had a pretty funny interview with the guy who created a single molecule motor. He admitted it was a pointless endeaver because there's really no way to use a single molecule motor, but he did it "mostly because it's cool." That's how I define a geek.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
And weren't they right? Nuclear power does give us clean, limitless engery and we can deal with the byproducts no problem.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
From the article summary, I thought he meant "disassemble" as in reverse engineer and figure out how the things work, and I was thinking "cool, like open source nanotech."
But in reading the article, I found this is not what he's talking about. Instead he is talking about how to decommission various molecular nanotechnology (MNT) creations, and e.g. the difficulties that are created by shields and shells created around various small scale entities.
I think both of these sides to "disassembly" seem pretty damn important.
All those isotopes came from somewhere down there anyhow, right?
Nuclear power seems pretty damn clean to me, and I live about 15 miles from a nuc plant that produces my power, far cheaper (per Kwh) than anything else with no polution that I can see.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
to take other bugs apart, for raw material to build other bugs, which are also seek-and-destroy bugs to bite bad bugs back and beat them to bits. But what if the seek-and-destroy bugs have programming bugs that causes them to break out of their methods and go completely bugfuck?
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not quite an analog pussy, just a cat that plays with vinyl
An interesting goal, and an innovative approach to the gray goo problem... but I take issue with his statement that *every* nanotech item should be easy to disassemble.
Some nanotech shouldn't be disassembled, and we should know how to make it that way.
There are some nanotech applications where this "Law Of Disassembly" would be a generally bad plan, because there are some things that we want to stay made.
Space elevators and other similar tech come to mind... leaving easy dissassembly possibilities in megastructures is a pretty horrendous risk from a security perspective.
Or... to toss his own ideas back at him, the possibility of long-term nuclear waste storage in virtually-indestructible nanotech containers.
We don't want them breakable, and we don't want them to have flaws that can be exploited by unscrupulous individuals or groups.
An analogous situation would be the single-molecule spacecraft hull postulated by Larry Niven-- completely invulnerable to nearly any conceivable force until it encountered enough antimatter to destabilize the structure and reduce the entire hull to powder. In interstellar space, unfortunately...
I still agree that easy disassembly is a good idea for most purposes, but there are few laws that should always be applied without exception.
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in tolerance and free speech." - David Brin
1. A nanite may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A nanite must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A nanite must be microwavable and explode in a flurry of sparks and smoke
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Right now we have teen-age kids writing viruses, spyware, and worms--and releasing them into the Internet. Right now I need to run a spam filter on my email, because I get about 20 real emails and 150 spams every day.
Imagine, in the future, teen-age kids creating badly-designed nano-assemblers and turning them loose into the wild. I'm a bit worried about this.
One of the first things we will try to do with assemblers is make medical nanites that make us all live longer. It may turn out that resistance to natural diseases isn't as important as resistance to brand-new designed diseases.
The flawed but interesting novel The Diamond Age pictured cities in the future as pockets of safety, ringed with clouds of defensive nanites that were constantly repulsing attacks by destructive nanites. Poor kids would try to make a little bit of money by running out into the clouds with capture devices, trying to bring back interesting/useful samples of nanites, to sell to researchers. (Breath masks recommended, if you didn't want to die young with nano-scale junk in your lungs.)
That may never happen, but we can already make artificial diamonds for use on tools. Imagine diamond-tipped chisels. Imagine tiny flakes of diamond dust in the air... tiny, sharp flakes of diamond. Could this be a problem in the near future? (Not a rhetorical question; I don't know enough about artificial diamonds, or the properties of diamond dust, to answer it.)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Absolutely any thing that can self-replicate will be subject to the laws of evolution. So if some supposedly self-limiting replicator has any variants that can replicate faster (and pass on that variation), then that variant will become more prevalent. With each succeeding faster variant comes the potential for run-away population growth (to the limit of available resources). And any variant that can consume alternative resources (having consumed the initial set of resources ) will also become more populous. The result is the gray goo disaster that people fear.
Attempts to build in self-limiting features (replication delay clocks, kill switches, error-correcting DNA ROMs, special only-replicates with a special nutrient, etc.) will only present an obstacle to evolution, not an insurmountable barrier. You can add 9s to the probablity that gray goo won't happen, but you can never get to 100% if self-replication is permitted.
That said, you could also create a balanced nano-organism ecosystem with both predators and prey and boost human/animal/plant immune system to fight off nanoorganism attacks. (There is a reason that bacteria have never taken over the world.)
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Nanobot Five is alive! No disassemble!
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
This is disturbingly reminiscent of "nuclear power will give us clean limitless energy, and don't worry, we'll deal with the byproducts later because we'll have the tools by then."
Hey cummon, nuclear power will provide us will clean limitless power, once we have fusion. And if the-powers-that-protest hadn't given the world nuclear such an ugly stain, we'd probably have it by now, as there'd be a shed-load more research being done.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
So why can't the solution to nuclear waste disposal be as easy as this: Simply reverse the uranium mining and refining process, to where you're decomposing the material into less and less refined material, until you get to the point where you are mixing it with 1000's of tons of dirt and putting it back into hugh open pits ... Shouldn't cost any more than getting it in the first place ...
and argues for what he calls the 'Law of Disassembly,' that 'every MNT product must be disassemblable by at least one [of several possible methods].' The article ends with some good suggestions for raising awareness of this important issue. Gratuitous quote: This is disturbingly reminiscent of "nuclear power will give us clean limitless energy, and don't worry, we'll deal with the byproducts later because we'll have the tools by then.
This is idiotic. Any reasonable MNT device will be mostly carbon in a form very like diamond. Yes, diamond is cool; it's hard, light weight, etc. But it isn't some SciFi ubermatter. For instance, it burns pretty much the same way coal and graphite do.
As for the products of MNT, it depends a heck of a lot on what is beeing made. Is he seriously suggesting that we shouldn't be allowed to use MNT to produce clean drinking water for third world countries unless we have a way to disassemble it? Or he just techo-fearmongering without bothering to be serious?
I will agree though, it is disturbingly reminiscent of the FUD that was spread about nuclear power by the fossil fuel industry that has done so much for the environment (not to mention world peace).
-- MarkusQ
We don't even really know how to build nanobots and already we're talking about failsafes. I agree that adding a failsafe is a good idea, even in a nanobot that can't replicate, but unless you know how you're going to build something you can't know the best way to throw a wrench in the works. It may not even be possible to add a particular failsafe to a nanobot because of engineering constraints. First build a few, THEN figure out where to stick the self-destruct.
Just a few thoughts. Basically, if you keep the nanites dependent on an unusual environment or disrupted by an easily-achieved environment, you'll be going a long ways toward preventing a grey goo disaster.
If we can get a nanobot that can make a basic computing element, a basic structural element, and a basic actuator element, as well as reproduce itself, from water and air (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, the same stuff you and diamonds are made of) it would make the industrial revolution pale by comparison.
Imagine having a factory unit that fits in your hand and with a supply of air and water it could make more of itself or make any structure or electronics gizmo you have a program for. Connect yourself to the internet and get free programs to build housing, greenhouses, furniture, computers, wireless nodes for the new internet, cars, solar cells, all without significant human intervention and costing nothing more than water, air, and power, or for the extra cheap using only your own solar cells.
This is the extremely conservative vision, assuming that we will only be able to produce a few basic things with nanomachines (but assuming we can build a nanofactory that reproduces itself), not assuming we will be able to make foodstuffs, cybernetic enhancements, or any of the obvious things that would be handy to have as microscopic machines (blood cleaning & oxygenating machines, cancer finding & eating machines, machines to be the roto-rooter to your clogged arteries, etc).
Oh yeah, and once the technology is mature enough that a self-reproducing version escapes the lab, imagine getting all of this for next to nothing, and giving them away to your friends just because it costs you basically nothing to do so. Oh yeah, and don't forget to save the third world while you're at it.
And don't forget, that's the conservative vision. I cannot imagine that within the next 50 years we won't have nanomachines that do that. If we can avoid everyone killing everyone else in the power struggle that ensues, we will be trading in virtually all of the old problems that aren't social for new ones.
From the article:
We will know how to decomission them. This is not to say that it will be easy, or that the results between then and now will be pleasant, which if anything is the argument for this "law". (I think a "law" should be something that cannot be sidestepped. This is more of a rule that we wish would be a law. If anything, call it an edict. If you can get anyone to call it anything.
Backing up a bit,
Another problem which should be easily solved by sufficient advances in nanotechnology :) You can take the stuff apart bit by bit and do whatever must be done to make it entirely safe. Also, it should let you build sufficiently advanced machines not necessarily small ones) to stop and contain a meltdown, should something that unnecessary occur. I think that the advances in materials technology would allow that, especially given a reasonable design to start with. I might be wrong here, but in general it does seem like something you could do. I know this is a broad dodge sideways but the real issue with nanotechnology is that someone somewhere who really should not have their hands on nanotechnology will one day get it. Arguably, the military or government of any current world power would be a bad force to have in control, but I guess it's inevitable and it will be better than some. Nothing could possibly be better or worse, however, than a lone genius who believes that it's their right to decide for everyone what path to take, with that kind of power.
Given that it's bound to happen eventually, what can we do about it? The author is talking about a convention that he's expecting people to follow. Well, they won't. At the very least some military and paramilitary organizations, who will have nanotechnology, will use it without any controls like this whatsoever. Therefore, at the very least, organizations like this are going to be interested in the proper disassembly of these items. In short, the stuff of a large number of science fiction novels, and very peripherally, one or two episodes of a certain television show that had way too many episodes and changes of neckline.
Aristoi, a book by Walter Jon Williams contains a lot of material on this topic. I haven't read any of the "official" literature on this topic but it sounded, at the very least thoughtful, and it was pretty entertaining. The question of how to make maximally efficient nanomachines while still keeping them under control, which is to say physically contained, at least during testing, is definitely of great interest.
Regardless, we will have to know how to decommission them. Therefore we will know, or die trying to find out. I know it sounds overly dramatic, but it is certainly a real issue.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
This monster called technology is a force we have to deal with. "Deal with" being the operative words: it is not something we control, at least not anymore. It is way too big, powerful, and important to be arbitrarily restricted, and any efforts to implement controls would have to be quick, effective, and global, i.e., practically impossible. In light of this, what the author of the article proposes is eminently reasonable and foresighted.
There has been much talk of the dangers of nanotech, for example from Bill Joy and others, and it is, or should be, a point well-taken. What the author proposes is twofold: when designing replicable nanotech devices, implement constraints on reproduction rates, and second and probably most important, design in disassembly through, for example, the ability to take the thing apart, or by biodegradabilty, or by oxidation susceptibility. In other words, prepare in advance an "achille's heel" that would allow a dangerous development to be easily disabled. I would only argue here that mutliple achille's heels should be designed in.
And, to quote from the article (yup, I read it, sorry):
No doubt there is much to argue with and discuss at this point, but that is the whole idea - let the discussion begin. The future is coming and the time to plan for it is now.=-+
We have ling since developed the capacity to reprocess and dispose of nuclear waste. And by dispose it of I don't just mean bury it in the ground. Breeder reactors and processing facilities that can turn high level radioactive waste into fissionable material and useful radioisotopes have been around for more than a decade. The DOE site at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratories alone could reprocess all the nuclear waste generated in the US, and well as by our NAVY. It is only the mindless fear of nuclear proliferation that prevents us from using it to do so.
Although the grey goo is a problem that is constantly hovering about the use of nanotechnology, we have to consider that we have other far more developed methods of mass destruction. Nuclear, radiological, and especially biological weapons are potentially as destructive as the goo, and require far less technical expertise to manufacture and distribute. More troubling, they allow us to be destroyed with current technology, rather than a bothersome wait for nanotech to catch up. On the bright side, those suicidal people that feel the inclination to do away with all of us are a bit psychotic and thus less able to organize something like a mass release of a weapon of mass what-have-you. I'm not worried about anything besides the price on the first tickets up that space elevator.
------- "A true friend stabs you in the front." -Eliot
A crucial distinction that is not being made in this discussion is the one between nanomaterials in general and nanorobots particularly. It is possible that one day we will be able to build functional nanobots that can live freely and replicate. We can cross that bridge when we come to it.
What is more relevant and has been less well-discussed by /. is nanomaterial remediation. Carbon nanotubes are very tough and have been demonstrated to be very toxic in mice . Thought has not been given about how to dispose of materials such as these without creating a public health hazard. It is clear that nanomaterials will be used in greater and greater quantities due to their exceptional properties. Therefore, we can work to solve the inevitable disposal problem now or later. It will cost less to address disposal now.
Now President Carter has had his share of critics, but his worry about reprocessing is opening up more avenues for diversion of atomic materials and making the Bomb available to more people. Yeah, yeah, the plutonium that is cooked in a LWR is the wrong isotope for the Bomb compared to the plutonium cooked for shorter times under different conditions up at the old Hanford reactor. I guess there is some controversy as to whether with enough technical smarts you could make a bomb from LWR plutonium.
I say we forget about Yucca Mountain and just store the spent fuel rods "on site" and build more storage, whether it is more "swimming pools" or perhaps "dry cask storage."
OK wait, would everyone here agree that compact fluorescent lamps (CFL's) are a Good Thing -- saving on coal and nuclear power and saving the Earth and everything? Is there any Amory Lovins disciple out there with anything bad to say about CFL's? Guess what, they have mercury in them, and no, they don't last forever -- I have had enough of them long enough to see them burn out. For years, the City of Madison wouldn't take them in the garbage, telling us to pile them up in our basements. Oh, and I have dropped more than one of those things, so I suppose I am brain damaged from the mercury by now.
The City of Madison now collects CFL's and fluorescent tubes if you wrap them and separate them from other garbage -- have no idea what happens to them. I say lets just stockpile spent fuel rods until some future markets develop for what is in them.
What's interesting about the protests about the project is that the political types that represent the area where the hole is are fine with the project... it brings plenty of jobs to their area, and they're convinced of the safety.
You are so fucking wrong it boggles the mind. I'll challenge you to read this article and think before you support bullshit like this in the future.
And as a resident of Las Vegas, may I personally say, fuck you.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
I don't understand how so many slashdotters can be convinced that we will experence global armegeddon at the hands of nanomachines that will reduce us to 'grey goo'.
I hope what I type here might help dispel some of this parasitic meeme!
In the event that we mannage to make 'room temprature' nanmachines that are not instantly destroyed by a slight breeze, can break down even terminally simple matter for use in replication, and somehow get released into the world with a malicious intent (or through a glitch)- they will not be too much of a threat!
Ultimately unless some methoed of making semi-conductors and computer circurtry that dose not involve electricity at all comes along, each and every single active nanomachine will be vunerable to a simple EMP, and EMPs can be easily generated by sending massive voltage through a coil- hence even a 'barnyard warrior' fighting a nanomachine threat could rig up his disel truck to take out the microscopic buggers (that might make a good movie though!). In the event that we do find a way to making non-electric computer circutry it would have to be immue to dosens of other things that can mess with computer circuts (for instance a theoretically 100% optical computer could be fried by massive ammounts of UV radiation)
And lets not forget the technical overhead required to overcome those first few problems! Any nanomachine made of metal will be victim to rust, small bits of object rust much faster then large ones- hence a swarm of iron nanomachines could be killed with a simple spray of salt-water! Diamond ones would be extremely brittel (diamond is strong, but shatteres rather then bending) so sound waves would be an effective weapon (True for any crystaline structure; and a crystaline structure is required for optical transmission!)
Next is the ability to reprduce using simple matter, I mean, a lab is a very different enviornment then the real world, we'll probablly see self-replicating nano-machines that work in specifically temperature controled vats long before we see ones that can do it in the real world: Why, even if you can get a machine so sofisticated that it can tear apart simple carbon atoms, and whatever else it needs (and figure out what's carbon and what's not) and build a copy of itself, it's likely to loose it's tiny manipulators with every major temprature change, as the particles grow and contract while it tries to move them along!
Next someone will have to be able to get a hold of these things, and reprogram them to do somethign bad (that may actually be the easiest part: as all you have to do is REMOVE code that will be telling them to do other things besides replicate), but it will still require a multi-billion dollar lab to access there tiny circutry and reprogram them on such a basic level (the equivalent to taking out chips in a modern computer, but requireing a nano-manipulator!), so this is not something a 'backyard terrorist' is going to do, and if a government dose it, they will put a reasonable 'off' time in them, which will probabally put them into the same catagory as other WMDs.
-Millions of Monkeys, Millions of typewriters, 6 hours of sorting through faeces encrusted pages to find: This post
Amazingly precise surgery. Imagine tiny robots that could destro cancer cells, but leave healthy cells alone. Imagine if solid sheets of clear diamond were cheaper than glass.
Imagine if the only real cost to build a product (such as a rocket engine or a child's toy) were only the design (and then self-replicating nano-bots would take-over given a supply of common elements).
Yes, yes. This seems to be a long way off, but the scientific principles are sound even if we don't have the engineering know how yet. Furthermore, the risks are significant, so it's about time that we start planning for how to do these things safely and securely.
Read the book The Diamond Age Or a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson. Besides being a fantastic (if strange) read, it gives an idea of the possibilities and (to some extent) the dangers of nanotech.
Also, check out Engines of Creation The Coming Era of Nanotechnology by Eric Drexler. It also explores the possibilities of nanotech, but presents a compelling case that we should be planning for this technology to make sure that it is safe secure and truly beneficial.
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
There is already "nanotechnology" (and "picotechnology") that resists disassembly: compounds that take a long time to break down in the environment, compounds that cause harm to the environment when they break down, etc. You know, things like DDT, plastics, etc. If we can't even manage to get reliable biodegradability into shopping bags or computers, how does anybody expect to get it into nanotechnology?
Fortunately, this particular worry is a marketing gimmick: we are about as likely to be overwhelmed by non-degradable nanomachines as we are to fall into a black hole. We don't need a "center for responsible nanotechnology" because there isn't any nanotechnology and there likely won't be, ever. Unless, of course, you are referring to paint manufacturers and biotechnology companies.
In most cases, a little simple planning might have prevented these wrecks, in others, a thoughtful application of technology might have prevented the possibility of disaster. We're at the threshold of being able to do amazing things with matter and energy, and we've already been seriously burned by technodisasters from Chernobyl to Bhopal. The real possibility of global disaster, demands that the intelligence be put in the technology from the beginning. The technology must be;
We've already constructed technologies that have left behind environmental disasters. It's not like we don't already know how that process works. The threat is to do precisely the same thing with a technology that is perfectly capable of sterilizing a city, state, or nation. We can no longer afford the trade of expediency over sanity. The cost just got too high.
Genda Bendte
--"Don't come running to me when the gray goo eat's yer feet off!!!"
Needs to apply to genetic engineering too.
Any autonomous/self-replicating device, organism or other material that is to be released into the environment, must be reversible, i.e. it must be at least possible to disable it within a reasonable period, and ideally possible to remove all significant traces of it from the environment.
It is not enough to simply say "Well, we've done tests and it doesn't seem to harm anything as far as we can tell so far".
If anything people need to learn how many times such statements have proved to be false from the software industry, e.g. "Well, we've done tests and the software seems to work fine - no bugs left as far as we can tell" - yeah... unleash it baby!
This law should also apply to the Internet, i.e. release of autonomous/self-replicating software.
Every potential poison we create must have an antidote.
If anything we need to develop skills/technology at disabling these things just as much as the skills to create them in the first place.
No doubt there will be those quite happy to unleash grey-goo...