xant's post makes the important point that self-replicating machines (or self-replicating anything, really) don't necessarily have to be self-aware.
Unfortunately, that doesn't much change the potential danger they might pose. Viruses are the furthest thing from sentient; they still manage to pose a real threat to even the new, improved, technologically-endowed humanity. The Great Grey Goo presumably wouldn't be sentient either, but that wouldn't stop it from using your body as a "resource" to "solve its own problems."
Evolution doesn't have a "purpose." That's the flaw in this argument. Evolution is something that just sort of happens when things self-replicate enough. By "self-replicate enough," I mean to say "self-replicate in such a way that different individuals have different rates of reproduction." Of course the evolution of a certain population is constrained by the constitution of that population, and that constitution is in turn predetermined by the evolutionary history of the population, but that evolutionary history does not necessarily doom any species to the habitation of a single niche. It's not hard to think of cases where a species has discovered a novel environment and spread like... well, like Great Grey Goo.
Even if the only evolutionary pressure on a species of machines was the ability to get solar energy, that would put them in direct competition with humans, since all the food we eat depends on solar energy to grow. And then maybe we try to check their replication so that they don't use up all the sunlight, and we inadvertantly start selecting for the machines which are the best and thwarting our efforts. Etc, etc, etc.
Again the same with cybernetics. I know that there's currently a group of people in America who are in love with the idea of having cybernetics attached to themselves, but IMHO they're just a variation on the body-mutilators, albeit a slightly less bizarre one.
I wouldn't discount this possibility out of hand. Plenty of cultures have traditions of "mutilation" or body-modification, even in ways that your typical American or Westerner might find grotesque. Heck, plenty of Americans are modifying their bodies in ways that other Americans find grotesque. I don't think it takes much imagintion to come up with a cybernetics that both effectively communicates that you remain "human" and is aesthetically pleasing to typical humans or whatever. And so... well, leaning on the whole evolutionary idea, it may well be that the ability to stomach this kind of body modification, especially in the perhaps less pleasing early stages, will lead to an advantage in the accumulation of technological power to come.
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Unfortunately, that doesn't much change the potential danger they might pose. Viruses are the furthest thing from sentient; they still manage to pose a real threat to even the new, improved, technologically-endowed humanity. The Great Grey Goo presumably wouldn't be sentient either, but that wouldn't stop it from using your body as a "resource" to "solve its own problems."
Evolution doesn't have a "purpose." That's the flaw in this argument. Evolution is something that just sort of happens when things self-replicate enough. By "self-replicate enough," I mean to say "self-replicate in such a way that different individuals have different rates of reproduction." Of course the evolution of a certain population is constrained by the constitution of that population, and that constitution is in turn predetermined by the evolutionary history of the population, but that evolutionary history does not necessarily doom any species to the habitation of a single niche. It's not hard to think of cases where a species has discovered a novel environment and spread like ... well, like Great Grey Goo.
Even if the only evolutionary pressure on a species of machines was the ability to get solar energy, that would put them in direct competition with humans, since all the food we eat depends on solar energy to grow. And then maybe we try to check their replication so that they don't use up all the sunlight, and we inadvertantly start selecting for the machines which are the best and thwarting our efforts. Etc, etc, etc.
I wouldn't discount this possibility out of hand. Plenty of cultures have traditions of "mutilation" or body-modification, even in ways that your typical American or Westerner might find grotesque. Heck, plenty of Americans are modifying their bodies in ways that other Americans find grotesque. I don't think it takes much imagintion to come up with a cybernetics that both effectively communicates that you remain "human" and is aesthetically pleasing to typical humans or whatever. And so... well, leaning on the whole evolutionary idea, it may well be that the ability to stomach this kind of body modification, especially in the perhaps less pleasing early stages, will lead to an advantage in the accumulation of technological power to come.