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Drexler Clarifies Grey Goo Scenario
b00le writes "The BBC says that the scientist many regard as the father of nanotechnology has backed away from his famous claim that runaway nanomachines could turn the planet into 'grey goo'. Eric Drexler now says nanomachines that self-replicate exponentially are unlikely ever to enter widespread use. So that's all right, then, but he also said 'tiny machines would need close control' - which not everyone would agree with. I always imagined some kind of emergent behaviour would, er, emerge." Bill Joy is still suitably pessimistic.
The biggest problem with the grey-goo scenario is that it requires an astonishing amount of work (tearing apart molecular bonds and using the resulting material to make an extremely complex machine) without taking power consumption into account. Getting energy to a machine that small is extremely difficult (your body has to basically immerse it's cells in fuel to keep them going). A machine that small recieves an absolutely puny amount of sunlight, and Tesla style distributed power doesn't work over long distances. Worse, the energy potental of almost every material on the planet is far too low to be useful in powering a tiny machine (you can't power a robot with dirt).
This problem, coupled with the fact that the nanotech people have barely demonstrated anything even remotely close to grey-goo yet, lets me sleep easy at night. There's no need to get so worked up over vapor.
I read the internet for the articles.
If they could turn the world to grey goo, bacteria would have already? Well, I suppose it's multicoloured goo really. But wouldn't anything that can reproduce uncontrollably be just as affecte by the pressures of the environment as any other living organism?
We're all just human. 50 years ago, they predicted that we'd be zipping around in flying cars-- and no one at all predicted the huge impact of the Internet. We don't know if self-replicating nanobots will ever enter the market. For that matter, we don't know if the grey goo scenario is possible or not. When they first tested the atom bomb, there were those who feared that the blast would ignite the atmosphere itself-- and until we tried it, we couldn't be sure if it would or not. Today's particle accelerators are creating heretofore-unknown forms of matter, and for all we know, they could create a new sort of matter that would destroy the world. We're just people-- we aren't gods. How can we say "This will happen" or "this won't happen"? All we can say is "We don't think this will happen"-- but that is no guarantee.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
The primary limitation on even arbitrarily sophisticated nanotechnology which could prevent a runaway grey goo reaction is the lack of a sufficient source of energy. A nanomachine wouldn't be able to get much energy out of eating inorganic matter such as rocks because, aside from a few exceptions (coal, for example) it's mostly well-oxidized and sitting in a free-energy minimum.
Wikipedia
It would seem that nature's methods of self-replication work best.
Prey had a really dumb ending anyway :(
this image is frightening.
the potential for error with something like this is huge: whoops, programmed the little bugger wrong! sorry, you don't need that hemoglobin, anyway.
It only takes one.
"Asleep at the switch? I wasn't asleep, I was drunk!" -- Homer
(1) Machines only do what you design them to.
Mind you, people often design them wrong, and then the fail to function, but that isn't going to spontaneously create self-replicating machines. Besides, if the raw materials are not available in the right form, they cannot replicate.
(2) Self-replicating machines are prohibitively complex.
Have you had a look at the genome of a simple bacteria lately? How about the support machinery in the bacteria? Trust me, an evil mad scientist would not have the funding or resources to develop a self-replicating machine.
(3) The real problem with nano machines would be simple design flaws, not replication.
If your nano machines are supposed to identify cancer cells and kill them, but they mistake healthy cells for cancer cells, THEN you have a problem. That is a lot more realistic. But a decade of testing on any given design would happen before it was used in humans.
These nanomachines couldn't REALLY churn through every nanogram of matter on our planet, RIGHT?
The whole grey goo scenario is pure alchemy. Except instead of turning lead into gold, we're turning it into grey goo. We've got people inventing perpetual motion, too. Are the 1800s back? Can't we invent new scams?
After a few million years of evolution, we have enzymes. They are generally very large molecules, bigger than what some claim for nano-machines, and they are also very specialized. They do one thing. You don't get anything general-purpose or intelligent at the molecular level, there just isn't room for it.
Organic life has already covered the planet, in green stuff.
I doubt that any man-made gray goo could compete with the Green Goo God made without a LOT of help. By the time we were good enough to make the gray goo beat the God's Green Goo, we would have already made safeguards such as Gray Goo Cops, little nanites whose sole job it is to rome the world looking for rogue nanites and eat them and reproduce more Gray Cops.
Organic based reproducers beat metals based ones before, and they will do it again if the silly puny little machines try to take over.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
"Eric Drexler now says nanomachines that self-replicate exponentially are unlikely ever to enter widespread use."
Why is that still not particularly comforting? Just one tragically (intentional or otherwise) bad design is all it could take, theoretically. Not to turn the earth to "goo", but to seriously screw the conditions we humans deem useful to our existence.
Not a few decades from now, but a century or so down the road when this stuff really picks up and the tools are more accessible. With every step of our advance, we seem to merely reinforce the reality that we're really just fancy homonids with an ever-increasing number of dangerous gadgets, mashing the buttons on the controls.
Humans are so convinced we're a required part of the fabric of the universe. But *poof* Gone. Nobody would care beyond the occasional underpaid archeological student of the next dominant sentient life form.
Maybe I should start planning what kind of confusing fossil record to leave behind. Time to find some cooling lava and a pair of Godzilla shoes.
It is terribly hard to build your first few nanites. Then you have to look at the replication ratio. How many more of itself can a self-replicator build before it fails? You've got to get the ratio above one.
The likely scenario is that the self-replicators are not robust and we never develop the technology to the point at which the ratio is solidly above one. So civilisation potters along quite wealthy for 50 years, then problems with contanimation, vibration, temperature, something, result in the nanites dying off. It could take decades to recover the lost art of building the first few, decades of great hardship for a society that has come to depend on nano-technology.
"Given that we do not routinely go out and murder other people I would say that most people ARE stupid enough to have a healthy respect for human life."
...weapons..". i ask you, how many weapons like that do you have...wait, here's the catch: that reproduce quickly. Sperm and the Egg are just such a weapon, you may argue...please see the "quickly" part above.
Given that you totally missed the point and you are an AC, i'm having trouble justifying answering, but wth, it's thursday right?
First, you missed the part about, "easily synthesizeable, self-reproductive
Also, you say "we" and i assume you are speaking of you and me, because you surely aren't talking about those humans who reside in prisons for, how did you say, "routinely go[ing] out and murder[ing] other people"? Surely not. Well, AC, it's been fun, i must be going now.
Eric Drexler now says nanomachines that self-replicate exponentially are unlikely ever to enter widespread use
No, that's not what he said; that statement is an oxymoron. If something self-replicates, its numbers necessarily grow exponentially until it hits resource constraints in the environment. There are no "nanomachines that self-replicate sub-exponentially".
What Drexler said that nanomachines that self-replicate are unlikely to ever enter widespread use, and therefore nanomachines will not replicate exponentially. Instead, they will be manufactured by desktop machines, according to him.
Nobody knows how to make molecular assemblers anyway, yet alone self-replicating nano-bots. Many scientists say Drexler's ideas would not work in any case.
... There are much more important technological threats to the environment to worry about in the real world.
Look at it this way - we have self-replicating nano-bots right now - they are called bacteria. Have they turned the world into gray goo in runaway exponential growth? Are we going to be able to make more efficient nano-bots than mother nature has done in the last 4 billion years?
Bill Joy's worries about nano-bots are like saying we should stop all research into magic because we could set off a chain reaction that would turn us all into frogs. Nano-bots are FANTASY
(Obviously, they don't care because his system still leaves them the 1% or whatever percent advantage on every bet, so they'll be fine)
When he tried to talk me into playing the system, I explained that I don't gamble for the odds and winning. I can't, since I know the odds are against me. There's no joy in it that way. However, if I sit, visit with people, make sure I get the maximum number of free drinks and other comps, and keep my burn rate down below a bearable level, I can have fun. Trying to gamble based on a system would take enough concentration that it'd lose me every one of those advantages, so I don't hack gambling. In fact, what I really appear to myself to be hacking is the chance to practice my social skills. Some of us nerds do need practice there, after all.
A few days later, he brought the subject up again. Two additional sources had taught him about system that depended on a limited level of multiple-deck card counting. Now, this is a system that works. It gets you past the 1% house advantage, and if you're good at it you'll probably get banned from casinos that catch you at it.
At that point, I realized this guy was hacking blackjack. He was simply applying hacker principles to gain maximum advantage in a situation. It wasn't about any deeper obsession or nutjob personality quirk... it's just something every hacker does. In fact, every hacker I've ever met does this. One saves a few cents a day by bringing his own soda to work rather than use the vending machine. He'd make a year's worth of those savings up by working another 10 minutes. Go figure. Another spends untold hours cracking DirectTV smartcards, but then scrupulously guards the info so DirecTV isn't harmed beyond his own single larceny. Again, his hourly rate makes this time worth about 10x the cost of just buying the services. It's the challenge, not the money. Another optimizes driving routes until he's got the fastest routes home at any time of day... oh, wait... that's me.
So what that Bill Joy optimized his video buying. It isn't necessarily obsessive. He probably JUST GOT THE IDEA and followed thru out of curiosity.
Saying Bill's a nutcase for this and that it somehow invalidates his opinion on the risks of nanotech is as wrong as somehow coming to a conclusion about Richard Stallman's politics based on the fact that he has some ragged personal hygiene issues. They're so unrelated that you're a nutcase for even thinking they're proof of anything.
Not to be unfair to your well-taken larger point, but your premise is only true in theory.
Exceptions to the military following the orders of politicians come in various ways, from self-protection to obstinance. Let's take just one. Sometimes orders are nebulous or ambivalent. Sometimes military engagements are ill-defined. And sometimes deniability goes all the way to the top. Case in point: Tiger Force in Vietnam.
As the Toledo Blade's Pulitzer-winning investigative series established last year, Tiger Force was a law unto itself. Ostensibly performing recon, the truth was much more complex and sinister. In fact, the squad was just raping and murdering whomever they pleased, as surviving members told the Blade's reporters. Nobody specifically ordered them to do what they did. Nor--and this is the key point--did anyone tell them not to do it. (Note for the conspiracy-minded: the Blade is far from being a leftwing publication. It's a family-owned daily newspaper--one of the last--serving steak-and-potatoes Ohio. It doesn't get much more staid than this in journalism.)
Fast-forward to this year's atrocities in Abu Ghraib. The soldiers say they were told to commit torture. Their commanders deny it. The politicians deny it. The truth is probably somewhere in between. We only need look at the souvenir photos of US soldiers committing evil to know it didn't take a politician anywhere to tell them to enjoy it.
We cannot excuse military malfeasance and free-lancing. The answer is oversight, constant and vigilant, and punishment for abuses. And we must be very cautious about what technologies that barely-governable institution is allowed to play with.