Nanotechnology: What Will It Mean?

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Nanotechnology What Will It Mean?

• Ralph Merkle
• January 2001

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Outline

• Introduction
• Visions of good, visions of harm
• Guidelines to principled development

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Introduction

• Nanotechnology in a few decades will
• Bring medical nanobots, smaller than a cell,
  that
• cure cancer,
• heart failure,
• old age.
• make our times look the way we view medieval
  times
• Everyone who dies pre-nano will be thought to
  have lived briefly in poverty.
• Pollution will be gone (unclear)
• Molecular manufacture will have no chemical side
  effects.

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Introduction

• In the early 80s, Eric Drexler published Engines
  of Creation
• Scientists were skeptical.
• Science was telling us nanotechnology is
  unavoidable.
• Computer technology points the way
• ICs are now sub-micron feature length
• Why not other kinds of products?
• In 2000, 106 are being spent on nanotech
  development.

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Outline

• Introduction
• Visions of good, visions of harm
• Guidelines to principled development

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Visions of good, visions of harm

• Some people (Bill Joy) recently, publicly,
  belatedly noted
• Nano is dangerous!
• Drexler discussed the dangers extensively as far
  back 86 88 (A Dialog on Dangers)
• Bill Joy advocates relinquishing nano research.

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Visions of good, visions of harm

• Doing so is problematic
• The attraction of wealth, glory, strategic
  advantage are great.
• The research will continue, underground thus
  w/o oversight.
• The advantages of nano will be lost to the
  obedient.

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Visions of good, visions of harm

• What are the kinds of concerns?
• Deliberate abuse
• Accidents
• Deliberate abuse (by a small group or nation)
• Could cause catastrophic harm
• Best prevented by clear understanding of
  technology
• Its offensive capabilities
• Countermeasures to those capabilities
• (The good guys dont always win.)
• Lack of clear understanding puts innocents at the
  mercy of those who disregard laws.

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Visions of good, visions of harm

• Accidents
• a self-replicating machine could replicate itself
  unchecked, converting the biosphere into copies
  of itself.
• The entire earth biosphere might vanish in 1 day.
• Merkle replicating nanobots are no more likely
  to be like living things (threatening the
  biosphere), than existing computers are.
• (Hmmm. What about suicidal misanthropes? )

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Visions of good, visions of harm

• Accidents
• Merkle gives an example of robotic arms that make
  robotic arms.
• They are not autonomous.
• If you cut off their power, they stop, just like
  robots do on a larger scale.
• (But, what if an autonomous nanobot was made,
  deriving its energy from its surrounding (e.g.,
  photosynthesis)?)

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Outline

• Introduction
• Visions of good, visions of harm
• Guidelines to principled development

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Guidelines to principled development

• The Foresight Institute
• (founded by Eric Drexler, I believe)
• has draft guidelines for safe molecular
  manufacturing.

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Guidelines to principled development

• For example
• Replicators are incapable of replication in
  natural uncontrolled environment.
• Replication depends on artificial energy source
  or components.
• Use encryption error-detection to prevent
  alteration of their blueprints.
• Etc.

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Guidelines to principled development

• The upside potential of nano is staggering.
• We cannot stop all people from developing it.
• Focus on doing so responsibly.