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Rise of the Nanobots
splinter writes "How nanotechnology will change the world is an article predicting that, as in the last turn of the century, an industrial revolution is coming soon - only this time we will see molecular nanotechnology rather than automobiles. " Mmmm...nanites. Beautiful, beautiful [nanites].
how 1) you can read a story that says 'this will change the world' and you think to yourself that he hasn't really grasped all the implications,
and 2) that star trek's enduring legacy to earth culture will be the word 'nanites'?
Don't you hate having to stop programming and web-surfing to do those mundane chores like showering, blowing your nose, etc.? Wouldn't it be great to have nanites invading every part of your body, taking care of all the drudgery for you?
That's what I really want. Nanites up my nose. I'm sick of having to keep a box of Facial Tissues handy at all times.
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Yet again, an article in which people talk about the wonderful (and terrible) things that nanotechnology has in store for us. These people don't seem to have any idea about the massive scale we're looking at here.
I don't want to be a killjoy, but we're still taking the very, very first few step. The equivalent of looking at Hero's engine and talking about spaceships.
Nanotech will be very very useful for certain things, but I suspect it will be a niche product for a long time, happily taking one very simple thing and turning it into another simple thing.
Remember, we still know very, very little about how our own cells are constructed. Trying to create a nanobot than can go in there and create new ones is a great idea, but it's not going to be here next week (or next year, or maybe not next century).
I suspect that our only hopy will be developing AI powerful enough to do all the hard work for us... (and that's another really big job)
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I personally do not understand why journalists bother creating such a report. First of all, the writing comes off as very uninformed. Granted, this is primarily because he's writing about a field which few people know much about, but it feels like one of those things you see from the early 1900s about how the future will have flying cars and robots and stuff like that. Did it happen? No!
If you really want to see some good future predictions, go read a book. Who, at the turn of the cetury, made the best successful predictions? Why, science-fiction writers, of course. Tanks, A-bombs, etc., all were predicted far ahead of time. Unfortunately, there were tons of things that they predicted that never came to be as well.
The lesson to be learned here, I think, is that any prediction of the future is nothing more than a half-educated guess. Especially not from journalists. The future is far too fluid of a place to predict with any accuracy. Live your life and watch what happens. The future shall be far more interesting than we can predict right now, and the best way to find out what it will be like is to go there.
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This article seems to say: "Ra ra, Nanotech is amazing and will change your life in 50 years. You'll be living in a virtual paradise with all of the world's problems solved." Forgive me for not being so optimistic.
First, the time constraint. The article claims these things could likely be a reality in 50 or 100 years, citing the discoveries we've made in the past 100 years. But remember that Alan Turing claimed that we'd have AI capable of perfectly imitating a human by the year 2000, and we're nowhere near that. 100 years-- maybe. 50 years? No.
The article also claimed that the only factory jobs would be design and structuring. Tiny little robots would do all the work. Ignoring the problem of power supplies, I remember the words of Frank Herbert's Dune: "Machines didn't free men. They only allowed men with machines to enslave other men."
Or what about "synthesizing food to stop world hunger"? The major cause of famines is not lack of FOOD, but lack of MONEY. When you get right down to it, plant organisms are remarkably efficient at building food, far more efficient than robots building food could be. Enough food exists in the world for everyone to be fat and lazy, but the starving people can't afford to buy it.
Similar rebuttals apply to the rest of the claims. Common sense: 1, Pie in the Sky: 0.
-Ted
"Nanites" sounds trite. I prefer, "nanities", a mush of "nano" and "entity." Then we can call us larger, organic types "inanities."
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
Yes, there exists a plausible heaven (and hell) upon the creation and mastery of nanotechnology. One of the points the article mentions is the obliteration of hunger and the emancipation of the environment. But, wait, we have the tools RIGHT NOW to do those very same things except that they aren't being used properly or are being kept from the hands of the people who need them.
All of the good and saviour aspects of nanotechnology the article mentions depend on how the technology will be distributed and put to use. Unless the technology is used on a wide-scale and available to everyone, the heaven-on-Earth described will be limited to pockets of "civilization".
If we want to take full advantage of nanotechnology in the future, we need to put in place the infrastructure that will support its gains TODAY. If we expect nanotechnology to clean up the environment, we need to take steps NOW to do just that (ie. reduce pollution and provide clean-ups *world-wide* and not just in isolated areas). The same goes with food. We need to put in place fair distribution channels TODAY so that nanotechnology can make use of them to help us save the world TOMORROW.
Nanotechnology is not a silver bullet and yet the article touts it as such. In order for the technology to really affect our lives in the future, we need to help it along and make sincere efforts to change our lives today -- something which I felt the article failed to mention.
ian
They're nanites after all.
They can only take little, iddy-biddy, tiny steps.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
When writers in the Golden Age of SF predicted powerful computers, they usually didn't predict the tasks involved with maintaining those computers: system administration, database tuning, spam-filtering, etc.
I think jobs like this will always exist, even as AI gets better and better. We want our machines to serve us, and as our machines get more powerful and more complex, we think of more powerful and complex ways for them to serve us -- but then describing exactly how we want to be served, and describing how to prioritize those services when resources are limited, becomes an intellectual challenge. (Some people have a hard time explaining to other humans exactly what they want; why should they have any better luck with machines?)
The languages that we (or our agents) use to tell machines what we want from them grow more abstract and more efficient, but our ambitions for what we want from computers grow until they strain the capacity of our languages and our machines' resources ... and then someone invents a more expressive language, or a more efficient implementation of an existing language, or a machine with more raw power, and the cycle continues.
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I'm confused.
Werd.
The one scenario that keeps coming to my mind is that early on in nanobot development some nanobot AI coder is going to be hacking some code late one night and introduce a small bug that just causes the bot to keep reproducing itself out of whatever's around. She'll tell her nano-bot-building-machine to build the first one, and becuase it all compiles cleanly, she'll go home for the night.
She'll wake up in the afternoon to find a huge sea-like nano-mass where her lab used to be. Which will be a huge swarm of nanobots deconstructing each other to build new copies of themselves except for the outer layer, which will be busy devouring the earth's crust in an attempt to do same.
And because the technology's new, we won't be able to stop them with other more advanced bots, 'cos they haven't been invented yet.
We might be able to nuke them....
K.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Yet again, an article in which people talk about the wonderful (and terrible) things that nanotechnology has in store for us. These people don't seem to have any idea about the massive scale we're looking at here.
:-) But that's not a fair complaint against your argument. We know a hell of a lot more about cell development and its molecular mechanisms today than thirty years ago. We actually know enough to create entirely new forms of bacteria. We have the general idea for how all the mechanisms work, even if some mysteries (such as protein folding) persist. This is after thirty years... and many technologies created researching molecular biology will be transferable over to molecular nanotechnology... we have a hell of a head start with this endevour compared to researchers in the sixties. I think you're a bit too skeptical here...
The dangers of Nanotechnology as both a weapon and the potential commercial misuse are staggering. Journalists are right to question the potential outcomes of this technology, just as they were right to question the justifications of molecular biology advances back in the late '70s. That journalists printed many mistaken ideas and displayed the ignorance of a layperson, compared to the knowledge of a scientist on the inside, doesn't disqualify them from printing valuable stories in order to inform the public.
I don't want to be a killjoy, but we're still taking the very, very first few step. The equivalent of looking at Hero's engine and talking about spaceships.
I don't understand the reference to Hero... Sorry. But I think you would find K. Eric Drexler, and the folks at the Foresight Institute might disagree on your timetable. The point they make, and one which I agree, is that the critical threshold discovery for viable molecular manufacturing is Self Replication. Once we can build a robot which can replicate itself using ambient atoms, we can actually begin manufacturing materials on a large scale. You might argue that this manufacturing process is fraught with the perils of complexity for which we can't plan. And you might be right... but I suspect that this kind of manufacturing is highly parallelizeable, hence the success of biological organisms, and we're going to find that a few fairly simple rules will allow us to build very complex three dimensional systems just like biological organisms.
Nanotech will be very very useful for certain things, but I suspect it will be a niche product for a long time, happily taking one very simple thing and turning it into another simple thing.
You've got to be kidding me. Nanotech represents the biggest (smallest) manufacturing shift ever. It's weapons potential make it a sure bet for NSF/DARPA funding for some time to come. And with funding on that scale, expect returns. How long did the government seed molecular biology research before it turned commercial? And before it turned commercial, how long was that research providing useful products to the military?
Remember, we still know very, very little about how our own cells are constructed. Trying to create a nanobot than can go in there and create new ones is a great idea, but it's not going to be here next week (or next year, or maybe not next century).
Nitpick: I hate it when people tell me to remember a point they're trying to present forcefully. As a reader, it's not my job to remember your stated position before it's even been written!
I suspect that our only hopy will be developing AI powerful enough to do all the hard work for us... (and that's another really big job)
Wow... now developing real AI is a seriously tough job which requires major new scientific discoveries before we can even begin thinking about a timetable. Nanotech almost just an engineering problem at this point... I don't think we'll need any form of self aware machine in order to resolve the parallelizeable problems of complex 3D manufacturing that Nanotech implies. And honestly, given the strategic nature of this technology, we're going to see nanotech advances a hell of a lot faster than you're predicting.
But I hope not... Humanity is less ready for Nanotechnology than discovering Atomic Bomb. And we still haven't figured a way out of that mess yet.
First their are a number of practical problems in the way. The biggest one I see is computational and storage power. If each one of these little nanites is going to be self replicating, then it is going to need to contain, within itself, instructions to build a complete replica of itself with the materials it can find. This in itself is no small task, as the nanities will be neccessarly very complex machines. Also necessar are instructions to do all the various tasks that the machine will be designed to caryout. Human cells are increadibly complex living machines. The idea that a nanoscale machine will be able to contain directions for repairing all of the millions of types of cells in the human body to me seems to be a vary long way off, if not impossible altogether
Everyone seems to be assuming that the nanites will be autonomous creations which react of their own volition. I don't see that as a viable option at all. Instead I would propose that a central computer system be used to coordinate the nanites, it would contain all information and processing power that the nanites needed. The only obstacle then is communication. The nanites must communicate their surroundings to the base machine and the base must send out commands to the nanites. This brings up two problems, 1. The nanites must be able to 'know' their surroundings somehow to transfer the info back. 2. There must be some way for communication to take place.
Once those two are taken care of, I don't see a problem with coordinating 40 trillion nanites to manufacture a car from a pile of dirt.
An alternative to this would be instead of using nanites as labor, we simply use them to manufactor raw materials and/or fuel from more common substances. Imagine being able to take a bigass sand dune from the Sahara and turn it into steel plates or something of the sort. In order to revolutionize industry the nanites need not replace labor.
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Assuming the most optimistic case of the impact of nanotechnology, we could suddenly find ourselves in a situation I have been predicting for several years. Since Eli Whitney developed the concept of the assembly line, industry has been making amazing progress in its ability to produce more goods at less cost in a shorter amount of time. Computerization has increased the pace of progress toward efficiency (measured in effort hours to produce a widget, not neccessarily in cost; economists normally talk about efficiency in terms of the ration to capital invested vs. the return on capital; I am speaking here only of the human investment). This is immediately obvious when you consider how many people you know are actively engaged in "real" work (the production and distribution of food, construction of homes, medical practice, and other effort that is generally necessary for the continuation of life as we know it) versus the number who are engaged in non-productive work (advertising, web site design, movie production/distribution, selling clothes at the GAP, and other work that is not essential to the maintenance of life). We continue to move toward a service economy. Thus far, human efficiency gains have been mostly limited to agricultural/industrial work (replacing mules with tractors (allowing one farmer to farm a greater area of land) or replacing auto workers with robots), and have been limited by the government (farm subsidies to keep economically unviable farmers in production) or unions (through contracts which guarantee jobs which might otherwise be eliminated by increases in efficiency). To a lesser degree we have seen this in clerical positions (no one has a typists pool anymore; Also, fewer people have secretaries who work directly for them). If we take farming as an example, you will notice that the price of many agricultural commodities is undergoing a prolonged and severe depression because it is possible to product a far greater amount of food than consumers demand. Nanotechnology, the Internet, and other nascent technological developments stand to further accelerate our move toward human efficiency and expand it into other areas. The problem is that demand is basically a limited quantity. Invention of new products can serve to create additional demand, but these products are usually luxuries and demand for them fluctuates with people's perception of their wealth. When there is insufficient demand, prices drop, forcing companies to find means of operating more efficiently. Frequently, this means cutting employees. Thus, it is conceivable that we may in the near (20-50 years) future face a situation where excess production capacity forces a downturn for prices in every industrial sector (quality AI could do this to service industries as well), forcing companies to cut employees, further reducing the quantity of demand available in the economy. I'm not sure that our current economic systems can survive such a situation. Naturally, the optimistic Star Trek fans will suggest that we will all lead idyllic communal lives in harmony with nature and wealth will be completely abolished, but such does not seem consistent with human nature.
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is not "little more than a single molecule", it is a robot built to nanoscale precision. It has a computer on board (or it wouldn't be a robot), sensors, and tools built into it. It can perceive and respond to its environment.
I agree, however, that microscopic nanobots probably aren't going to be all that useful. They can't see the big picture, so they can't really know what's going on around them. They also can't have terribly powerful computers because they're just too small. Power sources will be problematic, as will communication, further limiting their uses.
IMHO, nanobots will show their greatest potential, not as isolated nanites, but in huge differentiated linked masses (closer to mammals than microbes). This will make them better-coordinated and a lot less likely to go berserk on a self-reproducing rampage (think self-expanding, not self-reproducing). They can still have nanoscale tools, they'll just know where they are and how what they're being used for fits into the larger task.
I think it's overpopulation and poor distribution. But generally, I agree: famines and other ills are social and political problems; we already have the technology to make our world a "garden of Eden".
Yes, I realize the basis of this thread was humor, but it seems that many people consider "nanites" to be capable of magical atomic rearrangement to/from any configuration, with no energy cost at all. I'm afraid that just ain't so.
Burn it into its constituent atoms, of course.Hmm...last time I checked, snot was a non-flammable substance. Even one molecule at a time, you could only get a physically sustainable reaction if the end products have a more stable energy state than the raw materials (or else you have to add a bunch of energy from outside).
Water (the main component of any bodily goo) is an extremely stable & low energy compound. There's just no way to transmute water into anything else without adding a whole lot of energy. Where will that energy come from? And where will it go after it's been wasted into heat?
I guess most computer science majors aren't required to take thermodynamics, otherwise you'd already remember There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
...then the population will grow and you'll need to send more food, and more food, until there's really not enough food.
The cold hard reality is that people need to be starving at the bottom because people will always be breeding at the bottom. If some people are not inclined to breed, the next generation will be mostly composed of people who are inclined to breed. The only other option is enforced population control, which IMHO isn't any better.
Like most liberals (excuse me for labelling you, but your post is classic liberalism, so I'll respond to your state of mind when you posted it), you think everyone should be feeding the poor, but you won't apply it to yourself. As a wealthy citizen of a rich country, you have an enormous power to help those in poorer countries. If you eliminated luxuries from your life, you could feed hundreds who will starve. Every time you buy a candy bar, you could have provided a family with a sack of grain. Every time you upgrade your computer, you could have dug a well and prevented several fatal infections. Your monthly internet bill could keep a small village alive through a bad time.
Perhaps you are generous, perhaps if everyone gave as much as you, there would be no problems with starvation (at least right now). But you would rather have the government coerce everyone to give as you do rather than give up your precious luxuries and act privately.
These things are your choice, as plainly as if you faced a child's head on a chopping block and a vending machine with a dollar in your pocket and had to choose between delaying the child's death for a week or buying a snack.
I know these things about my own life, and I accept them. Morality is enlightened self-interest. I obey the law, at least in serious matters. I am loyal to my friends, kind to those near me, even generous at times. I deal honestly, so that everyone involved profits, and preferably so does the local community and the society. I do not concern myself with the problems of those who are far away, unless it threatens to affect me. People profit by association with me, and so those I could profit from choose to associate with me. I do not support those who do not threaten me and my offspring, but might grow to do so with my support.
Am I moral in an absolute sense? I don't care. I am as moral as I want to be, and my actions are no less moral than the average. If my awareness makes me immoral, so be it, but if others are unaware it is because they are blocking the line of thought, rationalizing; the evidence is clear.
I guess someone had better spell it out.
The nanomachines could distribute themselves either throughout the entirety of the body's skin and mucus membranes or throughout the whole body. There's no need for any magical "burning into constituent atoms", because the machines would be interlinked, either directly or into larger scale transportation systems, so any material that needs to be eliminated (or provided) at any given site is moved bodily.
All this talk of energy problems misses the rather basic point that nanomachines are *already* doing this throughout our bodies. The current ones are soft protein-based, whereas we'll be heading for hard MNT because of its better engineering properties. Despite the differences in detail, the energy considerations aren't all that different in the two cases, so lack or excess of energy certainly doesn't look like a showstopper of any sort.
Having said that, this subthread completely misses another point: once it becomes the norm to have hard MNT machines running around your body, it's only a matter of time before bodies will no longer stick to their homo sapien form at all, so "personal grooming" may end up about as relevant to you as it was to the "liquid-metal" Terminator.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra