Nanotechnology : Book page

2004 : Nanovip.com : International Nanotechnology Business Directory Formal Launch

Benj — Tue, 23 Nov 2004 05:00:00 +0000

PRWEB - November 23, 2004 - The Nanotechnology industry web portal Nanovip.com ( http://www.nanovip.com ), after an exciting first year of development, has completed its beta phase and announces its formal launch. [PRWEB Nov 23, 2004] Paris, France (PRWEB) November 23, 2004 – The Nanotechnology industry web portal Nanovip.com ( http://www.nanovip.com ), after an exciting first year of development, has completed its beta phase and announces its formal launch. During the past year of beta testing of the Nanovip.com web portal, we have assembled an extensive database of more than 1250 international Nanotechnology enterprises. The Nanovip model is working well; we have already referred more than 100,000 of our visitors to the websites of companies listed in our directory, and new visitors are using our database at an ever increasing rate, further benefiting our subscriber companies. Our goal is to accompany the Nanotechnology industry during its rapid growth in the years to come. Our searchable nanotechnology companies database is clearly organized into a number of industry-specific categories, and each company is also listed by country of origin, for easy international localization. Our database is kept current on a daily basis, through a process of discovering and validating new nano companies to list. More and more companies are realizing the value of listing on nanovip.com, and they contact us directly. But in addition, each day our staff scouts the media for nanotechnology industry news and press releases, and in this way our directory regularly adds new listings from across the globe. Benjamin Melki, founder de Nanovip.com: "In only a few clicks, our visitors are able to locate the specific type of Nanotechnology company they're looking for by searching our database and using criteria such as state, city, or even postal code. We've carefully designed our site to be easy to use, so that navigating and finding information is intuitive and efficient." Today, one year after the test launch of Nanovip.com, the technical conception of the site has been achieved. The site’s functionalities have now been implemented and tested with success. We look forward to years of continued growth for the Nanotechnology industry and our unique search portal. About Kaeria SARL: Kaeria SARL is the company which owns and publishes Nanovip.com. Kaeria SARL is focused on international Nanotechnology promotion and business research. Contact Information: Benjamin Melki Kaeria Sarl 16, Bld Saint-Germain 75005 Paris – FRANCE E-mail: http://www.nanovip.com/nanoviptemplate.php?section=contact Web: http://www.nanovip.com

About Nanovip.com

Benj — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 14:52:05 +0000

About Nanovip.Com
Our interest in nanotechnology and the companies involved in this exciting industry naturally led us to the web, where we discovered that no definitive reference existed. We found some good web sites which provided nano business listings as part of their general directory, but there was no site dedicated to nanotechnology companies. This is why we created Nanovip.com: to offer a web-searchable, human edited database, focused on nanotechnology companies sorted by country and business sector.
Our site was launched in November 2003 and keeps growing every day. We are proud to continue to promote the nanotechnology industry from our position as the first exclusive worldwide nanotechnology companies directory.

About the Nanovip.com database:
Our goal is to remain the leading nano companies web directory, and to accompany the industry during its rapid growth in the years to come. Our database is clearly organized into a number of industry-specific categories, and each company is also listed by country of origin, for easy international localization. Our database is kept current on a daily basis, through a process of discovering and validating new nano companies to list. More and more companies are realizing the value of listing on nanovip.com, and they contact us directly. But in addition, each day our staff scouts the media for nanotechnology industry news and press releases, and in this way our directory regularly adds new listings from across the globe.

Maintenance: Each month, we automatically check each and every link in our database. If, after multiple checks, the link is determined to be dead, we remove it and add a new updated link if one exists.
Additionally, once a year, we manually check each listing to verify that the company’s contact information is accurate.

These measures insure that our database remains fully functional and as up to date as possible. (You can download our entire database here.)

About the companies in our database:
There is a debate to define which company may be considered a « Nanotechnology » company or not. It seems that a part of our audience expect to find molecular manufacturing companies with self-assembling robots capabilities. Some are considering the “bottom up” technology process of molecular manufacturing as the only “TRUE” nanotechnology. The problem is that as of writing this note, there are no “TRUE” nanotechnology companies according to the above definition. Thus we made the deliberate choice to list on Nanovip.com, companies involved in nanoscale interaction, manipulation, observation and fabrication: the result might not fit anyone’s expectation from a “nanotechnology company”.
It is easier to define the recent self-called nanotechnology start-ups, but it is more difficult to define already existing companies that are progressively incorporating nanoscale technology into their operations, yet these companies are still, in our opinion, engaged in the path of nanotechnology - a technology interacting with the matter at the nanoscale (atomic / molecular) level.

About Kaeria SARL
Kaeria SARL is the company which owns and publishes Nanovip.com. Benjamin Melki, a specialist in web site development with a strong interest in nanotechnology advances, founded Kaeria SARL, which also benefits from an association with the accomplished jurist Florian Pernes.

Kaeria SARL
16,Bd Saint-Germain
75005 Paris
France

Benjamin Melki:
"Science and technology are not given the respect they deserve in our modern society, in spite of the fact that not a day passes in which we do not benefit from their advances. If we were to freeze the development of technology as it stands today, all the goodwill in the world, all governments both right and left, would not be able to resolve the problems of poverty, of pollution, of energy, of healthcare…
Nanotechnologies, which arise at the convergence of biotechnologies and the information age, will permit humanity to take a giant step toward the amelioration of the problems of our times. In this spirit, Nanovip.com was created to facilitate contact between the key players in the domain of nanotechnology."

Florian Pernes:
"Nanotechnologies represent technological, ethical, and legal challenges, all at the same moment. We must be able to answer the new questions which will arise. Nanovip.com is an excellent base for those who want to identify and locate the builders of our nanotechnological future."

You can Email us here.

Add your content

Benj — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:01:48 +0000

Nanovip.com offers to nanotechnology business stakeholders a good opportunity to gain visibility on the web. Our site is visited by thousands of unique visitors each day, and is usually well referenced on the major search engines such as Google.

Nanovip.com has also partnered with other major nanotechnology business portals such as Nanotech-now.com and Tinytechjobs.com to share its companies' database; so when you submit your company to the Nanovip.com's directory, it will automatically be ported to partners sites as well !

Typically, nanotechnology companies visit our site and add their information in the appropriate category. Then, they reference their main products and create the profile information of the top staff members. Once this is done, companies can regularly send us their press release and announcements.

Note: some content addition is available only to registered users.

ADD YOUR CONTENT:

Companies and Institution: Add your nanotech company, organisation, academic group, website....
News and press releases: Create a press release or news.
Product: Reference your nanotechnology product: materials, tools and instruments, B2C and B2B products...
Calendar event: Create a nanotechnology event, conference, course...
People: Add the profile of a nanotechnology very important person (VIP). At the moment, we only accept profiles from businesses CEO, presidents, managers.... and other prominent figures from the media and research sectors.
Document book page: Book pages are used to store a document that does not fit any other content type. Typically, book pages are used to store documents such as white papers, scientific research, essays and any kind of knowledge.... all about Nanotechnology of course.
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Blog entry: A blog is a regularly updated journal or diary made up of individual posts shown in reversed chronological order. A blog is tightly coupled to the author so each user will have his 'own' blog.

Adriano Cavalcanti : Medical Nanorobotics for Diabetes

Benj — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 14:21:22 +0000

By Benjamin Melki, NanoVIP In February, Adriano Cavalcanti and his colleagues are publishing for the first time the detailed work describing a medical nanorobot hardware architecture for diabetes (*). This new paper, published in the journal Recent Patents on Nanotechnology - Bentham Science, addresses the concept behind the use of nanorobots as pervasive monitoring devices to help in the therapy of patients with diabetes. NanoVIP decided to interview Adriano Cavalcanti about his current and upcoming works for the gradual development and future use of nanorobots for diabetes. NanoVIP: How nanorobots may help patients with diabetes? Cavalcanti: The nanorobots may use embedded nanobiosensors to monitor blood glucose levels, and transmit every two hours this information through RF signals for mobile phones carried with the patient. If the glucose is eventually not inside the desired levels, the nanorobots activate a pre-programmed tune in the cellular phone, which may alert the patient to take any necessary action regarding the diabetes control with prescribed medicaments. NanoVIP: What is the advantage on nanorobots for diabetes? Cavalcanti: Nowadays patients with diabetes must take small blood samples many times a day to control their glucose levels. Such procedures are uncomfortable and extremely inconvenient. To solve this problem, the level of sugar in the body can be observed via constant glucose monitoring using medical nanorobotics. This important data may help doctors and specialists to supervise and improve the patient medication and diary diet. This process using nanorobots may be more convenient and safe for making feasible an automatic system for data collection and patient monitoring. It may also avoid eventually infections due the daily small cuts to collect blood samples, possibly loss of data, and even avoid patients in a busy week to forget doing some of their glucose sampling. NanoVIP: How do you expect to achieve nanorobots manufacturing? Cavalcanti: Recent developments on nanobioelectronics described through our work show how to integrate system devices and cellular phones to achieve a better control of glucose levels for patients with diabetes. Some well established and new techniques may be used jointly for such aim. Nanoelectronics in terms of VLSI circuits have demonstrated yet feasible devices with nanometer scales. These same devices can serve in integrating nanorobots with embedded sensors and actuators to build molecular machines, through actual manufacturing techniques and currently in course innovative nanotechnology methodologies. New techniques have been progressing most recently in 3D lithography, new materials like nanotubes, nanocrystal for sensors, antennas, and actuators. Therefore, they are together accelerating even more the downscaling of electronics manufacturing possibilities. Genomics investigation is putting also closer biologists, doctors, and engineers, through a better interdisciplinary comprehension about protein based mechanics for the human body metabolism processes. This same kind of information has become crucial and insightful for the investigation and development of applied transducers as nanodevices for biomedical problems. NanoVIP: What is new about nanorobots in this work? Cavalcanti: This work shows for the first time a system and hardware architecture with a wireless communication technique to address the interface and control upload, data transmission, and possibly teleoperation of nanorobots for diabetes. The detailed description on hardware architecture may support therefore advances towards manufacturing development of nanorobots. The presented approach may enable practical use of nanorobots for continuously monitoring patients in a pervasive manner. This can be quite interesting for patients who suffer from diabetes, but it can be equally useful for elderly people who needs constant monitoring, and also for early diagnosis of complex diseases. Another important and interesting aspect in our current development is the fact that, the similar architecture presented in terms of hardware and system integration, can be also used for a broad range of applications in medicine. NanoVIP: Beyond diabetes, what kinds of other biomedical applications can benefit from this architecture? Cavalcanti: For example, you may have the same concept being used as a basis for nanorobots in early diagnosis of cancer. Cancer can be successfully treated with current stages of medical technologies and therapy tools. However, a decisive factor to determine the chances for a patient with cancer to survive is: how earlier it was diagnosed; what means, if possible, a cancer should be detected at least before the metastasis has began. In fact, you have a similar problem about cerebral aneurysm. A critical issue on cerebral aneurysm is to detect and locate the vessel dilation, if possible before a subarachnoid hemorrhage occurs. Nowadays about 50% of patients with cerebral aneurysm die, because it is detected only after a brain hemorrhage happened. Considering the properties of nanorobots to navigate as bloodborne devices, they can help on such extremely important process of early diagnosis. Therefore, such integrated architecture may support the development of molecular machines to advance new therapies in medicine. * Adriano Cavalcanti, Bijan Shirinzadeh, Robert A. Freitas Jr., Luiz C. Kretly, “Medical Nanorobot Architecture Based on Nanobioelectronics”, Recent Patents on Nanotechnology, Bentham Science, Vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-10, February 2007. http://www.bentham.org/nanotec/contabs/nanotec1-1.htm -- Adriano Cavalcanti is the CEO and Research Scientist at CAN Center for Automation in Nanobiotech. For more information, visit www.nanorobotdesign.com or www.canbiotechnems.com .

Advertising

Benj — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 16:00:10 +0000

Nanovip.com is a great platform for the nanotech advertiser, because our audience is targeted and professional. We made the deliberate choice to give FREE access to all our content, and we use web advertising as a revenue source to keep Nanovip.com the best Nanotechnology business directory. We are now receiving 1000's of unique visitors daily all of whom are interested in your services. We can offer a number of limited advertising solutions ranging from paid links to reciprical graphic links. If you would like to talk with one of our team about your advertising requirement please make an initial request to johnt@nanovip.com and we will get back to immediately Thanks in advance. Nanovip team

Are We Enlightened Guardians, or Are We Apes Designing Humans?

Benj — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:33:46 +0000

By Douglas Mulhall Most students of artificial intelligence are familiar with this forecast made by Vernor Vinge in 1993[1]: "Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended." That was thirteen years ago. Many proponents of super-intelligence say we are on track for that deadline, due to the rate of computing and software advances. Skeptics argue this is nonsense and that we're still decades away from it. But fewer and fewer argue that it won't happen by the end of this century. This is because history has shown the acceleration of technology to be exponential, as explained in well-known works by inventors such as Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, some of which are elucidated in this volume of essays. A classic example of technology acceleration is the mapping of the human genome, which achieved most of its progress in the late stages of a multi-year project that critics wrongly predicted would take decades. The rate of mapping at the end of the project was exponential compared to the beginning, due to rapid automation that has since transformed the biotechnology industry. The same may be true of molecular manufacturing (MM) as self-taught machines learn via algorithms to do things faster, better, and cheaper. I won't describe the technology of MM here because that is well covered in other essays by more competent experts. MM is important to super-intelligence because it will revolutionize the processes required to understand our own intelligence, such as neural mapping via neural probes that non-destructively map the brain. It also will accelerate three-dimensional computing, where the space between computing units is reduced and efficiency multiplied in the same way that our own brains have done it. Once this happens, the ability to mimic the human brain will accelerate, and self-aware intelligence may follow quickly. This type of acceleration suggests that Vinge's countdown to the beginning of the end of the human era must be taken seriously. The pathways by which super-human intelligence could evolve have been well explained by others and include: computer-based artificial intelligence, bioelectronic AI that develops super-intelligence on its own, or human intelligence that is accelerated or merged with AI. Such intelligence might be an enhancement of Homo sapiens, i.e. part of us, or completely separate from us, or both. Many experts argue that each of these forms of super-intelligence will enhance humans, not replace them, and although they might seem alien to unenhanced humans, they will still be an extension of us because we are the ones who designed them. The thought behind this is that we will go on as a species. Critics, however, point to a fly in that ointment. If the acceleration of computing and software continues apace, then super-intelligence, once it emerges, could outpace Homo sapiens, with or without piggybacking on human intelligence. This would see the emergence of a new species, perhaps similar in some ways, but in other ways fundamentally different from Homo sapiens in terms of intelligence, genetics, and immunology. If that happens, the gap between Homo sapiens and super-intelligence could quickly become as wide as the gap between apes and Homo sapiens. Optimists say this won't happen, because everybody will get an upgrade simultaneously when super-intelligence breaks out. Pessimists say that just a few humans or computers will acquire such intelligence first, and then use it to subjugate the rest of us Homo sapiens. For clues as to who might be right, let's look at outstanding historical examples of how we've used technology and our own immunology in relation to less technologically adept societies, and in relation to other species. When technologically superior Europeans arrived in North and South America, the indigenous populations didn't have much time to contemplate such implications because in a just few years, most who came in contact with Europeans were dead from disease. Many who died never laid eyes on a European, as death spread so quickly ahead of the conquerors through unknowing victims. Europeans at first had no idea that their own immunity to disease would give them such an advantage, but when they realized it, they did everything to use it as a weapon. They did the same with technologies that they consciously invented and knew were superior. The rapid death of these ancient civilizations, numbering in the tens of millions of persons across two continents, is not etched into the consciousness of contemporary society because those cultures left few written records and had scant time to document their own demise. Most of what they put to pictures or symbols was destroyed by religious zealots or wealth-seeking exploiters. And so, these civilizations passed quietly into history, leaving only remnants. By inference, enhanced intelligence easily could take choices about our future out of our hands, and may also be immune to hazards such as mutating viruses that pose dire threats to human society. Annihilation of Homo sapiens could occur in one of many ways: * The "oops" factor: accidental annihilation at the hands of a very smart klutz, e.g. by something that is unwittingly immune to things that kill us, or that is smart in one way, but inept in others. Predecessors to super-intelligence may only be smarter than us in some ways, and therein lies a danger. An autistic intelligence could do us in by accident. Just look at current technology, where computers are more capable than humans in some ways but hopeless in others. * Annihilation in the crossfire of a war-like competition between competing forms of super-intelligence, some of which might include upgraded Homo sapiens. One of the early, deadlier competitions could be for resources as various forms of super-intelligence gobble up space that we occupy, or remake our ecology into an environment more suitable to their needs. * Deliberate annihilation or assimilation because we are deemed inferior. If Vernor Vinge is right, we have 18 years before we will face such realities. Centuries ago, the fate of Indian civilizations in North and South America was decided in a similar time span. So the time to address such risks is now. This is especially true because paradigms shift more quickly now; therefore, when the event occurs we'll have less time, perhaps five years or even just one, to consider our options. What might we use as protection against these multi-factorial threats? Sun Microsystems' cofounder Bill Joy's April 2000 treatise, "Why the future doesn't need us,"[2] summarized one field of thought, arguing the case for relinquishment-- eschewing certain technologies due to their inherent risks. Since that time, most technology proponents have been arguing why relinquishment is impractical. They contend that the march of technology is relentless and we might as well go along for the ride, but with safeguards built in to make sure things don't get too crazy. Nonetheless, just how we build safeguards into something smarter than us, including an upgraded version of ourselves, has as yet gone unanswered. To see where the solutions might lie, let's again look at the historical perspective. If we evaluate the arguments between technology optimists and relinquishment pessimists in relation to the history of the natural world, it becomes apparent that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place. The 'rock' in this case could be an asteroid or comet. If we were to relinquish our powerful new technologies, chances are good that an asteroid would eventually collide with Earth, as has occurred before, thus throwing human civilization back to the dark ages or worse. For those who scoff at this as an astronomical long shot, be reminded that Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 punched Earth-sized holes in Jupiter less than a decade after the space tools necessary to witness such events were launched, and just when most experts were forecasting such occurrences to be once-in-a-million-year events that we would likely never see. Or perhaps we would be thrown back by other catastrophic events that have occurred historically, such as naturally induced climate changes triggered by super-volcanos, collapse of the magnetosphere, or an all-encompassing super-nova. Due to those natural risks, I argue in my book, Our Molecular Future, that we may have no choice but to proceed with technologies that could just as easily destroy us as protect us. Unfortunately, as explained in the same book, an equally bad 'hard place' sits opposite the onrushing "rock" that threatens us. The hard place is our social ineptness. In the 21st century, despite tremendous progress, we still do amazingly stupid things. We prepare poorly for known threats including hurricanes and tsunamis. We go to war over outdated energy sources such as oil, and some of us increasingly overfeed ourselves while hundreds of millions of people ironically starve. We often value conspicuous consumption over saving impoverished human lives, as low income victims of AIDS or malaria know too well. This is an extreme understatement. A earlier recognition of the universiality of irrational institutional behavior would have prevented the error of expecting a "Nanhattan" project years ago and would have enabled the MNT aware to spend the last 20 years much more productively and with much more realistic plans. I suspect that if I grokked the depths of institutional irrationality myself I wouldn't be tempted to refer to civilization as "we". The animistic illusion that the collective has agency is not only dangerous, it is incapacitating. Michael Vassar Techno-optimists use compelling evidence to argue that we are vanquishing these shortcomings and that new technologies will overcome them completely. But one historical trend bodes against this: emergence of advanced technologies has been overwhelmingly bad for many of the less intelligent species on Earth. To cite a familiar refrain: We are massacring millions of wild animals and destroying their habitat. We keep billions more domestic farm animals under inhumane, painful, plague-breeding conditions in increasingly vast numbers. The depth and breadth of this suffering is so vast that we often ignore it, perhaps because it is too terrible to contemplate. When it gets too bothersome, we dismiss it as animal rights extremism. Some of us rationalize it by arguing that nature has always extinguished species, so we are only fulfilling that natural role. But at its core lies a searing truth: our behavior as guardians of less intelligent species, which we know feel pain and suffering, has been and continues to be atrocious. If this is our attitude toward less intelligent species, why would the attitude of superior intelligence toward us be different? It would be foolish to assume that a more advanced intelligence than our own, whether advanced in all or in only some ways, will behave benevolently toward us once it sees how we treat other species. This is completely anthropomorphic. An AI could literally be designed to treat us benevolently *for* mistreating other species and to treat us cruelly as punishment for our kindness. Admittedly, an AI designed by reverse-engineering the human brain *might* be anthropomorphic, at least at first, but if it doesn't remain so it is likely to kill us through indifference, not as judgement, and would be equally indifferent whatever our virtues. If it does remain anthropomorphic we should expect it to become the sort of being that a person would want to be, not a vindictive nightmare out of our tribal mythology. Michael Vassar We therefore must consider that a real near-term risk to our civilization is that we invent something which looks at our ways of treating less intelligent species and decides we're not worth keeping, or if we are worth keeping, we should be placed in zoos in small numbers where we can't do more harm. Resulting questions: * How do we instill into super-intelligence 'ethical' behavior that we ourselves poorly exhibit? Instilling ethical behaviors that we *do* exhibit will be fantastically difficult. Instilling behaviors that only a few of us exhibit will be little harder. Instilling behaviors that will be appropriate for situations that we have never found ourselves in will be much harder than that, and AIs will not find themselves in human situations. *We* have only the foggiest guesses as to what we would want done given historically fantastic power. That's part of why we have so much difficulty writing stories to make utopias interesting. Michael Vassar * How do we make sure that super-intelligence rejects certain unsavory practices as we banned slavery? * Can we reach into the future to prevent a super-intelligence from changing its mind about those ethics? These questions have been debated, but no broad-based consensus has emerged. Instead, as the discussions run increasingly in circles, they suggest that we as a species might be comparable to 'apes designing humans'. The ape-like ancestors of Homo sapiens had no idea they were contributing DNA to a more intelligent species. Nor could they hope to comprehend it. Likewise, can we Homo sapiens expect to comprehend what we are contributing to a super-intelligent species that follows us? As long as we continue to exercise callous neglect as guardians of species less intelligent than ourselves, it could be argued that we are much like our pre-human ancestors: incapable of consciously influencing what comes after us. The guardianship issue leads to another question: How well are we balancing technology advantages against risks? In the mere 60 years since our most powerful weapons—nuclear bombs—were invented, we've kept them mostly under wraps and congratulated ourselves for that, but we have also seen them proliferate from at first just one country to at least ten, with some of those balanced on the edge of chaos. Likewise, in the nanoscale technology world that precedes molecular manufacturing, we've begun assessing risks posed to human health by engineered nanoparticles, but those particles are already being put into our environment and into us. In other words, we are still closing the proverbial barn doors after the animals have escaped. This limited level of foresight is light years away from being able to assess how to control the onrushing risks of molecular manufacturing or of enhanced intelligence. Many accomplished experts have pointed out that the same empowerment of individuals by technologies such as the Internet and biotech could make unprecedented weapons available to small disaffected groups. Technology optimists argue that this has occurred often in history: new technologies bring new pros and cons, and after we make some awful mistakes with them, things get sorted out. However, in this case the acceleration rate by its nature puts these technologies in a class of their own, because the evidence suggests they are running ahead of our capacities to contain or balance them. Moreover, the number of violently disaffected groups in our society who could use them is substantial. To control this, do we need a "pre-crime" capacity as envisaged in the film Minority Report, where Big Brother methods are applied to anticipate crime and strike it down preemptively? The pros and cons of preemptive strikes have been well elucidated recently. The idea of giving up our freedom in order to preserve our freedom from attack by disaffected groups is being heavily debated right now, without much agreement. However, one thing seems to have been under-emphasized in these security debates: Until we do the blatantly positive things such as eliminate widespread diseases, feed the starving, house the homeless, disenfranchise dictators, stop torture, stop inhumane treatment of less intelligent species, and other do-good things that are treated today like platitudes, we will not get rid of violently disaffected groups. Furthermore, the relevant "we", e.g. the CRN task-force, has little to no prospect of exerting any postive and at least slightly nuanced influence upon the "They" who fail to do these blatantly positive things through informing them or reasoning with them. Since nuance is necessary and reason is all we have to offer, we must take our thoughts, our concerns, and our suggestions to those whe can reason, use nuance, and act effectively. To me, this strongly suggests that we find or become wealthy private individuals. Michael Vassar By doing things that are blatantly humane, (despite the efforts of despots and their extremist anti-terrorist counterparts to belittle them as wimpy) we might accomplish two things at once: greatly reduce the numbers of violently disaffected groups, and present ourselves to super-intelligence as being enlightened guardians. Otherwise, if we continue along the present path, we may someday seem to super-intelligence what our ape-like ancestors seem to us: primitive. But humans don't kill apes for being primitive. Humans kill apes because it is convenient to do so and because the people who kill them don't care about the apes. Making an AI that still cares about us once it is massively more powerful and intelligent than we are will be very difficult. Making one that doesn't have vindictive malice will be extremely easy. Vindictive malice isn't some natural property of any intelligent entity but is rather a specific adaptation that an AI built from scratch won't have and that one built using us as a model might or might not have by default but shouldn't have if it's creators are at all competent. Michael Vassar In deciding what to do about Homo sapiens, a superior form of intelligence might first evaluate our record as guardians, such as how we treat species less intelligent than ourselves, and how we treat members of our same species that are less technologically adept or just less fortunate. Why might super-intelligences look at this first? Because just as we are guardians of those less intelligent or fortunate than us, so super-intelligences will be the guardians of us and of other less intelligent species. Super-intelligences will have to decide what to do with us, and with them. If Vinge is accurate in his forecast, we don't have much time to set these things straight before someone or something superior to us makes a harsh evaluation. Being nice to dumb animals or poor people is by no means the only way of assuring survival of our species in the face of something more intelligent than us. Using technology to massively upgrade human intelligence is also a prerequisite. But that on its own may not be sufficient. Using technology to upgrade human intelligence carefully, with full understanding of the risks, and at our leisure rather than in a competitive, corner-cutting, race to the bottom *may* be a prerequisite. If we don't do that the people who upgrade first simply become the "something more intelligent" that we are endangered by. Ultimately we have to confront the REALLY difficult problem of describing a formal goal system compatible with human values. If current humans aren't smart enough to design one we will need humans who can, but to get smarter humans without encountering the very dangers associated with AI will require a radically transformed global society, one where the only competitors that the developing team must race against are infrequent natural risks, not other humans. Michael Vassar Compassion by those who possess overwhelming advantages over others is one of the special characteristics that Homo sapiens (along with a few other mammals) brings to this cold universe. It is what separates us from an asteroid or super-nova that doesn't care whether it wipes us out. Further, compassionate behavior is something most of us could agree on, and while it is often misinterpreted by some as a weakness, it is also what makes us human, and what most of us would want to contribute to future species. If that is so, then let's take the risk of being compassionate and put it into practice by launching overarching works that demonstrate the best of what we are. For example, use molecular manufacturing and its predecessor nanotechnologies to eliminate the disease of aging, instead of treating the symptoms. That is what I personally have decided to focus on, but there are many other good examples out there, including synthesized meat that eliminates inhumane treatment of billions of animals, and cheap photovoltaic electricity that could slash our dependence on oil—and end wars over it. Such works are not hard to identify. We just have to give them priority. Perhaps then we will seem less like our unwitting ancestors and more like enlightened guardians. And until we see an individual or an institution giving such works priority, and showing great wisdom and practiced nuanced rationality we should NOT bring MM to that institution's or that individual's attention. Michael Vassar End Notes 1. "The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era" http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html 2. "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html About the Author Douglas Mulhall is the author of Our Molecular Future: How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics, and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Our World, and co-author of The Calcium Bomb: The Nanobacteria Link to Heart Disease and Cancer. He managed a scientific environmental institute for several years and co-founded one of the early South American institutes devoted to recycling technology.

Considering Military and Ethical Implications of Nanofactory-Level Nanotechnology

Benj — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 22:16:45 +0000

By Brian Wang This essay looks at some existing trends in military capability and technology development, and considers the impact of nanofactory-level nanotechnology (NN). A nanofactory[1] is a proposed manufacturing system that could be built if molecularly precise manufacturing technology is developed. Current projections indicate that a nanofactory should be able to fabricate its own mass of advanced products—including duplicate nanofactories—in just a few hours. Assumptions of This Essay The development of a nanofactory seems to be between five and fifteen years in the future. If there is a secret nanofactory development program, then nanofactories might be produced at an earlier date. The impact of an introduction of nanofactory capabilities will be considered for the 2011 to 2025 timeframe. Artificial intelligence with human or better performance across a broad range of functions could in theory speed development of nanotechnology, but this is assumed to come after the nanofactory, because it is assumed that nanofactory-level technology likely would be needed to successfully reverse engineer the human brain. Safe Leads, and Who Will Get It First Any non-US developer of a nanofactory will have to either develop systems that overcome the current US lead in conventional and non-conventional capabilities, or develop new tactics that circumvent those capabilities. However, NN could make large amounts of current weapons systems obsolete. For the US, superiority would have to be maintained by pressing ahead with nanotechnology development, because former advantages may no longer be decisive. Although game-changing shifts in military technology advantage are historically infrequent, the costs and required base of technology for developing NN are widely available in the world. It is not assured that any one country will reach game-changing capabilities first. Also, nanofactories are not a finish line for technology. Nanofactories could massively accelerate the pace of research and development.[2] Precise designs could be produced and tested in hours. The cost of production will be almost equal to the cost of generating a prototype. Currently the United States spends billions of dollars and takes about five years to create one prototype of a new fighter jet. In the first months of the project, there are multiple detailed fighter jet proposals, which are then reduced to the compromise that is developed. In the age of nanofactories, multiple design teams with superior computer assistance could generate many more detailed proposals, and all of them could be built for little additional cost and effort and compared in competitive showdowns. This change in the rate of development will enable leapfrogging shifts in capabilities. Some Existing and Expected Capabilities by 2025 The following is a summary of existing and expected technology. Many people do not fully understand the power of current technology or the pace of technological progress. Military technology, surveillance, computers, and other technology are already very powerful and becoming more powerful. The capabilities listed in this section, which are projected to exist in the 2011-2025 timeframe, are those that currently are being funded and appear likely to be successful. Precision-guided munitions provide one of the most important existing capabilities.[3] Precision munitions lets the military destroy whatever can be identified as an important target. This places importance on airspace domination to allow the munitions to be delivered. Accurate military intelligence and electronic sensing are needed to identify and locate targets in real-time. In World War II, an average of 9,000 bombs were needed to destroy a specific target; now it usually takes only one or two. A month-long mission that used to require 30 sorties with 100 planes can now be accomplished with a cruise missile fired from 1,500 miles away, and the target will be destroyed in three hours. The United States has a $2 billion UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) annual budget[4] and possesses a large and increasingly wide variety of UAVs. Some are as small as insects, but they can be as large as supersonic fighters and bombers. Unmanned aerial vehicles will enable their users to conduct more capable and flexible military operations that do not have the political risk of loss of military personal. The trend towards unmanned military vehicles also is progressing in ground vehicles. Standard computers should continue to follow Moore’s law[5] for improvement and would be about 1,000 times more powerful than today by 2020. The potential developments can be summarized as a ten times increase in capability in most military systems and a 1,000 times increase in computing capability. Production Revolution and Product Performance in the Age of Nanotechnology One product of a nanofactory is another nanofactory (though security restrictions may limit this capability in deployed versions). This enables exponential manufacturing. The first tiny lab-built device can be made to build a system with two integrated devices, which can work in parallel to build four, and in just a few months can build a full-sized nanofactory. Less than a month after that, millions of nanofactories could produce thousands of tons of products (including more nanofactories) per hour. Products of nanofactories will be high performance: small precise machines are more powerful than large ones--perhaps a million times more powerful, when shrunk to the nanoscale--and precise materials may be a hundred times stronger than today’s best. Nanofactories will be capable of general-purpose manufacturing: because structures will be made additively from tiny precise building blocks under automated control, simply changing the program (blueprint) will change the product. A wide range of components and products will be possible, including computers, sensors, motors, and displays. Automated nanofactories will reduce direct manufacturing costs drastically. Carbon-based feedstocks are inexpensive. Services, design work, and intellectual capital costs would become the main drivers of overall costs and pricing. Nanofactory-level nanotechnology would bring 100 to 1,000,000-fold increases in militarily relevant capabilities. Systems could become both cheaper and more functional, to an extent that would make a game-changing difference. Sufficiently advanced systems could have an overwhelming advantage over less advanced systems; for example, an essentially unlimited manufacturing capacity combined with fully automated battlefield weapons implies near-certain destruction of all soldier-based forces. Surveillance and Data Mining from Now into the Age of Nanotechnology Nanofactories will make computers millions of times faster and more powerful than traditional computers. What can you get with this capability? ECHELON[6] is a highly secretive world-wide signals intelligence and analysis network run by the UKUSA Community. It is estimated to intercept 3 billion communications per day. A similar nanotechnology-enhanced system would be able to intercept many more messages and perform more detailed analysis on the messages. Ten times more capability could be obtained for 100,000 times less money. Instead of a single billion-dollar project producing one machine, there could be thousands of $10,000 Echelon workstations and even $100 portable Echelons. Such a powerful state-run surveillance capability could profoundly impact civil rights. Smart dust[7] is a hypothetical network of tiny wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS), robots, or other devices installed with wireless communications, that can detect anything from light and temperature to vibrations. Work on smart dust is ongoing at the University of California. Nanofactory-level nanotechnology would enable smart dust that is orders of magnitude more compact and with vastly improved functionality.[8] The improved sensing ability of nanotechnology-enabled smart dust and nanotechnology-enabled UAVs will revolutionize the military ability to identify and locate valuable opposing assets in real time. An arms race to make stealthy smart dust, smart dust detectors, and smart dust hunter-killers may be inevitable. One thousand times cheaper smart dust of similar capability would be the expectation from Moore’s law. Today, a smart dust device costs about five dollars and has 32,000 bytes of memory. In 2025, standard advancement would provide the same device for half a cent. Four hundred million smart dust devices, one for every person in the United States, would cost just $20 million. Each device could record 80 bytes of information every day for a year. Nanofactories could increase capabilities by a million times beyond that. The gain could be split between lower cost and higher performance: devices could be a thousand times cheaper and a thousand times more capable. The same $20 million referred to above could buy 400 billion devices. These could be distributed: two on each person in the world, eight for different locations that the person goes to or vehicles in which they travel, and 40 on different objects or animals that they possess. The improved devices would have 32 MB of memory and correspondingly more processing power and sensors. They could record video, audio, biosensors, and use better processing to discard redundant information. Information could be pooled to know which objects and people are together at different times. The history of any object or person could be tracked. Who and what were you with? What were you saying? How were your heart rate and blood pressure? Your mood? Your facial expressions and gestures? What was the weather? Did you have your dog, your wallet, your car keys, a gun hidden in your clothes? Did you swallow a balloon filled with contraband? Detailed records of 1600 bytes could be recorded every half hour for a year or every six seconds for a day. Nano-enhanced smart dust also could be weaponized. A person who offended any of the 100 different groups using smart dust to track them could be killed when the smart dust was activated to release a toxin. Even without nano, a future smart dust could have this capability, but the nano-version would be some combination of cheaper, more flexible, and more capable. This could enable those that control the smart dust to eliminate or control exactly whom they want under precise parameters. This could be part of a system of super-oppression. Destroying the World in the Age of Nanotechnology: Offense is Stronger A 100kg nanofactory-built combat drone could be supersonic[9] and have the destructive capability of a modern fighter jet. Nanofactories could produce billions of these drones in a few months. Several could be targeted at every person on the opposing side of a military conflict. Genocide will become cheaper and easier. Image processing and sensors could also allow a more selective targeting. It appears that offensive military capabilities will improve faster than defensive capabilities, especially since nanofactories would revolutionize access to space and the ability to utilize space-based resources.[10] Nanofactory-built launch systems with widespread use of diamond and carbon nanotube material would enable $1-10/kg launch costs by reducing the mass and construction cost of vehicle and systems.[11] Nanofactories could create space vehicles with ion drives with 739 kWe/kg specific power, 1000 km/s ideal exhaust velocity vehicle and 9.8 m/s2 acceleration. This would be an early capability provided by enhancing current designs with better materials and molecularly precise construction. The enhanced space systems that nanofactories can create will provide ease of movement in and around the solar system. For military purposes, space vehicles could divert and accelerate asteroids and comets at the earth and other targets. These vehicles could position themselves near a space rock (1,000,000 tons+) for months or years and divert large ones that would have passed near the earth so that they impact the earth. Even dinosaur killer comets could be diverted.[12] This comet diverting capability would have physics that are orders of magnitude in the attacker’s favor. It could be used as a second strike[13] capability for mutually assured world destroying capability. The defender would need a comet shield[14] that works even if there are intelligent forces actively working to make the defense fail. Most plans for comet defense depend on detecting a comet that will hit the earth early enough to nudge it out of the way. Second strike crews deliberately nudging whatever they can onto earth collision courses would makes defense a lot more difficult. Attackers with space rocks have a huge advantage. Large-scale space bombardment with large objects could be considered a doomsday response. This could actually be stabilizing: if certain powers have doomsday options, their enemies might back off from attempting to wipe them out. This does not address small-scale conflicts that do not trigger a doomsday response. It is unclear whether smaller incoming objects could be deflected or destroyed; objects too small will be destroyed in the high atmosphere, and it may not be possible to accelerate intermediate-sized objects to sufficient speed to evade destruction. If intermediate-scale space bombardment turns out to be a feasible offensive technology, it could deliver energies comparable to thermonuclear warheads. Nations and alliances either possessing or on a path to develop significant space programs are the United States, China, Europe, Japan, Russia and India. Nanofactories would greatly enhance space capabilities. On Deterrence The maximum deterrence you can have is the ability to kill all of your enemies and destroy everything they care about. (Enemies who do not care about dying may not be deterred even by this.) Deterrence does not require this ultimate level of harm; deterrence of a rational opponent requires only being able to cause more damage to them than they gain from attacking you. China has relied upon that level of deterrent for the last 30 years. Useful discussions of deterrence levels can be found at various websites.[15] Being weaker than an opponent that is evil can be a very dangerous position. A surprisingly small advantage can be exploited for genocide. The Hutus, armed with machetes and guns, killed 937,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. However, an imbalance of power does not mean that war or genocide is inevitable. Once side or the other will always have an advantage. Motivation is a key determiner of conflict, and as described in the following section, advanced nanotechnology can reduce incentives for war. Deterrence may not work if one side miscalculates the effectiveness of the deterrence of the other side. If an aggressor underestimates an opponent’s defenses or willingness to resist, they could mistakenly start a more costly conflict than intended. More accurate knowledge may prevent such miscalculation between rational opponents. However, a strategy of providing misinformation and confusing information could be followed by a weaker power to confuse an opponent who needs good information and a clearer cost benefit calculation before acting. Ethics, Shifting Motivations, and Rational Calculations in the Age of Nanotechnology The powerful technologies that are being developed could rapidly shift military balances of power. Nations cannot assume that their existing weapons inventory provides assured security. A lead in current technology, even current nanotechnologies, does not guarantee a lead with molecular manufacturing. The future balance of power will be determined by a nation's level of development with advanced nanotechnology, as well as space capabilities and other new technologies that will be augmented by nanofactory technology. Nations without a molecular manufacturing capability will be at the mercy of opponents with the technology. Nanotechnology can shift the motivations and rational calculation for war. For example, if nanotechnology makes a nation’s economy grow at 24% per year, then in three years that nation will have twice as much stuff; they would have less incentive to attack an equal size opponent and try to take their stuff. Attacking an opponent brings in elements of risk and costs. With such large gains in the near future, rational groups should not want or need to engage in violent conflict for economic gain. Other differences between groups that lead to conflict need to be addressed to prevent violent conflict. Genocide and super-oppression become technically easier with nanotechnology. Therefore, it is more important than ever for all people to work together toward peaceful resolution of differences and to keep those who would try to initiate atrocities in check. The economic bounty and other benefits[16] that nanotechnology could provide should be used by farsighted nations to reduce the motivations for conflict. End Notes 1. Phoenix, Chris (2003) “Design of a Primitive Nanofactory” http://www.jetpress.org/volume13/Nanofactory.htm 2. Phoenix, Chris (2005) “Fast Development of Nano-Manufactured Products” http://crnano.org/essays05.htm#7,July 3. Hallion, Richard P. (1995) “Precision Guided Munitions and the New Era of Warfare” http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/docs/paper53.htm 4. http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,87318,00.html, The FY-07 budget request includes $1.7 billion for UAV buys and research programs and $9.9 billion between FY-08 and FY-11. 5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law, “Moore's Law” is about the empirical observation that, at the rate of technological development, the complexity of an integrated circuit, with respect to minimum component cost, will double about every 18 months. 6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON,http://cryptome.org/echelon-nh.htm, ECHELON is a highly secretive worldwide signals intelligence and analysis network run by the UKUSA Community. ECHELON can capture radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes and e-mails nearly anywhere in the world and includes computer automated analysis and sorting of intercepts. ECHELON is estimated to intercept up to three billion communications every day. 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_dust 8. “Sensor networks for Dummies” MIT Technology Review, March 17, 2006 http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16607,300,p1.html 9. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06038/651627.stm, One small step for drones: Lockheed leaps into unmanned plane market, Feb 2006. Falcon, a conceptual drone bomber that would fly at Mach 9 near the edge of the atmosphere. 10. McKendree, T. L (2001) “A Technical and Operational Assessment of Molecular Nanotechnology for Space Operations,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Industrial and Systems Engineering Dept., University of Southern California 11. http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/nano4/mckendreePaper.html, Implications of Molecular Nanotechnology Technical Performance Parameters on Previously Defined Space System Architectures 12. Hammerschlag, Michael “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” http://members.surfbest.net/mikehammer/endword2.htm 13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike, In nuclear strategy, second strike capability is a country's assured ability to respond to a nuclear attack with powerful nuclear retaliation against the attacker. 14. http://spacewatch.lpl.arizona.edu/faq.html , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_deflection_strategies 15.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Nuclear_strategies 16. Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (2003) “Benefits of Molecular Manufacturing” http://www.crnano.org/benefits.htm About the Author Brian Wang has a degree in computer science and an MBA and has worked in the information technology industry for 20 years. He created and ran his own professional services computer consulting company with offices in Canada and the United States, and with clients in the USA and Europe. In addition to being a CRN Task Force participant, Brian has been a Foresight Nanotechnology Institute senior associate since 1997. He is also on the advisory board of the Nanoethics Group.

Corporate Cornucopia: Examining the Special Implications of Commercial MNT Development

Benj — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 21:49:24 +0000

By Michael Vassar The development of molecular nanotechnology (MNT) promises to lead rapidly to cheap superior replacements for a large majority of durable goods, a substantial fraction of all non-durable goods, all existing utilities, and some services. For this reason and due to the relatively low expected cost of developing nanofactories,[1] MNT represents the largest commercial opportunity of all time. Unfortunately, the very size of the opportunity—combined with its extreme suddenness, military significance, potential for disruption of existing institutions, and ease of duplication—creates certain severe complications that lead to difficulties in capturing the value created. MNT also has the potential to impact the timeframes and severities of a number of major global risks such as those of terrorism, emergent disease, global warming, omnicidal war, and human extinction due to competition by either intelligent or unintelligent robotic competitors, for which reason there are important non-commercial motivations for preventing its unrestricted utilization. As a result of these difficulties and of the intrinsic uncertainty associated with any particular attempt to develop MNT, commercial development of MNT is likely to be much less rapid than would be predicted from a simple consideration of the value to be created, relevant time horizon, and risk adjusted discount rate. Despite this, it remains highly probable that MNT will first be realized by a commercial project for the simple reason that probabilistic priors so strongly favor commercial development of new technologies. A slew of militarily relevant technologies were developed by the US, German, and Russian governments during the Second World War and in its aftermath, but that was at a time when the commercial and public sectors were far more fully integrated than they are today and when the external pressures forcing governmental efficacy were greater. By contrast, over the last few decades, virtually every significant technological development has been commercial in origin (or even recreational, e.g. the Open Source movement and SpaceShip One) rather than public. Governmental R&D initiatives, such as those aimed at curing cancer and AIDS and at developing space travel and fusion power have tended to fail totally or almost totally during the past 30+ years. Given that an important subset of possible scenarios are driven by commercial development, it seems prudent to examine in some detail the major features of most commercial scenarios and to identify the ways in which developers may experience unique difficulties distinct from those associated with the development of other products and the ways in which they may manage those difficulties. This paper will attempt to do that, examining the probable implications of both relatively open and relatively secretive development programs in the event of successful development of MNT. It will be assumed that the developers are highly rational and informed, and that they are attempting to maximize profit in the relatively short term while avoiding the most serious risks of MNT. Development will be assumed to occur within the next 20 years, over the backdrop of a world politically and technologically fairly similar to our own, and with a historically typical gap of a few years between the initial development of the technology and its successful imitation or implementation by competing projects. It also will be assumed that the more powerful MNT applications, such as those in intelligence amplification, neuroscience, extremely powerful distributed robotic systems, and artificial intelligence (AI) will take some time to emerge even given nanofactories and massive funding. Part 1. Competitive Strategy a) Pricing The simplest and most traditional of the problems facing MNT developers is competitive pricing. Setting the prices of MNT goods close to the cost of production provides little profit with which to expand or compensate for risk undertaken, while setting prices too high threatens both to unnecessarily reduce consumption below the optimal level and to draw both legal and illegal competitors into the field. In addition, given the number of industries in which MNT products are likely to compete and the political clout of many of those industries, either high or low prices could motivate antitrust concerns. Theoretically, a higher price is indicative of a monopoly while a lower price indicates competition, but a lower price will also lead to more successful and rapid competition with existing companies and to greater market share, and this could be seen as evidence of monopoly status or of anticompetitive tactics. Motivating competitors to develop MNT is probably the most serious risk associated with high pricing. In order to minimize this risk it will be necessary for prices to be relatively low, and also for expenses to appear as great as possible. It will be particularly desirable (from the commercial developer’s point of view) that the apparent cost of developing MNT be as great as possible, as this is the expense that can most easily be inflated. One way in which this can be done is to publicly spend as much money as possible on research ostensibly aimed at developing nanofactories over a fairly long period of time after nanofactories actually have been developed. Money can soundly be borrowed in order to fund this research, even at high interest rates, due to the certainty of eventual success. Meanwhile, profits can be generated via the sale of supposedly incremental results of the nanofactory research such as gem quality or better diamonds, doped silicon computers modestly more powerful than those otherwise available at a given price, and inexpensive carbon nanotubes. Once the nanofactories are publicly acknowledged to exist, the apparent low hanging fruit associated with the supposed development trajectory will be depleted, and a substantial fraction of the global pool of technical experts plausibly capable of relevant work will have already been recruited, discouraging imitation. In addition, the creditors will constitute a class of stakeholders in the new technology who are nonetheless integrated into the existing economic system. Loan repayment will contribute to the justification of profit to the public and to the government. In general, the public appears to accept the legitimacy of high profit margins most readily when the product in question is an extremely expensive luxury, an extremely inexpensive everyday item, or a new product with an explicit need to amortize development costs. It is important to point out that it is excessive profit margins, not excessive profits that usually are considered objectionable. For this reason, actual profits will be greater if expenses can be increased, because the dollar value of a 200% markup is larger on a product costing $100 to produce than on one costing $10. Wasteful expenditures on supposed inputs also can create stakeholders. Like software, restricted versions of MNT products can easily be designed and can be sold for lower prices than unrestricted versions. For instance, less expensive copies of a given product can be sold to less wealthy countries, or even less wealthy regions within a country. This might be accomplished without competing with the products sold to wealthier regions by installing GPS or inertial locators to monitor product location and disable them from functioning outside of their licensed area. In this manner, profitability can be maximized by selling to all potential customers for prices that constitute a reasonable fraction of their willingness to pay. With built-in biometric sensors, some MNT devices could even be assigned prices based on the personal characteristics of their purchaser. In addition to maximizing profit, this sort of strategy should greatly reduce any humanitarian concerns regarding the distribution of MNT products. The public generally accepts the existence of restricted software without resentment. Nanostructured physical objects can be made more difficult to hack than either software or contemporary hardware, so the restrictions on use built into MNT products can be more robust than those built into today’s printers or software. b) IP Protection The most likely outcome of patenting nanofactories in any given country would be widespread patent violation both by other countries and by many criminal organizations. This would probably be followed by the slew of problems[2] that long have been predicted to accompany uncontrolled MNT development, such as unstable arms races, malicious grey goo, and massively oppressive MNT empowered governments. In addition, pirate nanofactories would be used to build nanofactories of unpatented design, which then would be patented. All this does not mean that IP law cannot contribute some value to an MNT “first mover.” A large number of patents of variable scope can be produced to restrict the products that a competing MNT developer can produce legally. Patents on key components can obstruct possible commercial efforts to develop competing nanofactories without revealing too much about the workings of existing nanofactories. In a field as large and as unexplored as nanotechnology, there surely will be room for a number of extremely broad patents that can be used to slow down competitors. In such a fast moving field, even a patent that delays competition by a few months before being overturned could be extremely valuable. Potential patents might include mechanochemistry, carbon mechanochemistry, self-replicating machines, self-replicating programmable productive systems, diamondoid nanoscale machines, and more, but should be chosen to avoid revealing too much about how a nanofactory can be built. Governments may attempt to force developers to share MNT production capabilities or may simply steal such capabilities. When high-level officials finally begin to distinguish between reality and science fantasy and to recognize the technology’s potential, they rightly will see MNT as a national security issue. However, preventing simple theft is relatively easy. Nanofactories can be made large enough that they can’t be stolen covertly and/or lost. They can also be networked wirelessly or otherwise equipped for easy inventory. It would add little complexity to equip all nanofactories with oxidative self-destruction systems. The best way to resist forceful interrogation is probably to not have any individuals within the company who know everything or almost everything that is needed in order to build a new nanofactory, and to hold out the threat of not doing business with countries that violate the company’s rights. Directly threatening a country like the United States in this manner would be unwise. Rather than doing that, an indirect threat could be delivered by setting up production facilities in some high political risk countries with little respect for private property. If this is done, it is likely that one of these countries will attempt to steal MNT production capabilities prior to any developed country doing so. If the company responds by destroying all stolen assets, not sharing information, and refusing to trade with that country, this will deter other nations from repeating their mistake, at least in the short term. The desire not to imitate the behavior of disreputable states will be another incentive for developed countries to respect the rights of the developing company. Throughout the early commercialization of MNT, the continual borrowing of as much money as possible will be a major imperative. This is true for several reasons. The first of these is that it is important to retain control of the company and associated technology in order to implement a relatively long-term plan rather than one that might maximize shareholder profits in the very short term, for which reason stock should not be sold to raise capital. The second is that over the first decade or so, the scale of operation associated with the developing company will be continually increasing at such a rate as to make even ludicrous debts from a few years back trivial. The third reason is to acquire the previously mentioned sets of justificatory expenses and of influential stake-holding creditors. A fourth reason will become relevant later in development, once the potential of MNT is well established and the broader public and public intellectuals become hostile. Hostility is a nearly certain early result of any massive technological disruption regardless of the quality of life improvements it makes available (aging reversal technologies may turn out to be an exception to this generalization, since their psychological impact will be unprecedented in scope and is not easily predicted, but thus far even aging reversal seems to fit this generalization). As hostility develops in response to massive technological impact, it may be both possible and desirable to slow governmental activity by reducing governmental access to funds. This might be accomplished by competing with the government to drive up the price of debt and by releasing products which make an attractive lifestyle achievable on the interest payments from a moderate amount of high yield debt, reducing the size of the work-force and thus increasing the cost of running a large bureaucracy. Such actions should be undertaken gradually so that they are not interpreted as an attack on borrowers and bureaucracies, as that would lead to escalation. By raising both the interest rate and the wages of skilled labor, potential competitors can be further prevented from developing MNT independently. c) Dealing with Opposition Due to the potential for economic and social disruption, some countries may refuse to allow the import of MNT-derived products. This is not a serious problem for an MNT producer. A general boycott by all major nations is extremely unlikely, especially considering the magnitude of the benefits that MNT will make available. Tariffs would take some time to put into effect and whatever nation stood to improve its trade balance via MNT exports would petition the WTO for tariff elimination. In addition, MNT can be used to produce traditional capital for the production of non-MNT products. One of the earliest products released by an MNT developer is likely to be inexpensive hydrocarbons for fuel and other applications. These can be made by harvesting solar energy over the oceans, using it to hydrolyze water, and using the hydrogen to reduce atmospheric or other (limestone?) CO2. The machinery for all of this can be produced quickly in any quantity with MNT. Floating solar platforms can be made with either hydrocarbon production or MNT manufacturing capabilities. The manufacturing centers should be designed to utilize the hydrocarbons as feedstock and solar energy as a power source in order to rapidly produce more platforms of both types. Design and control for such platforms should be non-problematic, and their products could be sold on the global petrochemicals and natural gas market. In this case, there would be no practical difference between a country that chooses to purchase oil from traditional sources and one that purchases MNT-derived oil, as both would apply demand to the same pool of global production and impacting the same global price, making boycotts ineffective unless they were extremely broad. Hydrocarbon storage facilities probably will have to conform to all normal laws regarding the storage and transport of hydrocarbons, complicating implementation somewhat. However, simply violating regulations and hiring legal teams to delay the imposition of fines until they are no longer relevant may be an acceptable strategy for faster implementation if the regulatory framework would otherwise slow development overly much. While MNT will accelerate the development of new products, it will reduce the time required to build new capital even more. As a result, production capabilities sufficient to satisfy global petrochemical demand should take much less time to develop than designs capable of competing in a wide variety of industries. The revenue generated via the initial products will be an important part of what enables the rapid development of newer products. The revenue from this early activity will be more than sufficient to hire as many researchers and administrators as can be productively utilized to develop new MNT designs. Integrating so many new employees without critical security risks will be a difficult problem, but it should be a manageable one as there are already many companies that face similar difficulties. At this point, the MNT developers also should have enough money to purchase both public opinion and political influence in so far as these goods can be rapidly purchased. In order to minimize opposition it will be critically important for the developers not to be seen as a non-competitive monolith. This will be particularly difficult if MNT development is overt as opposed to remaining a secret, but it is probably possible under either secret or public development. The company may be best able to avoid conveying the impression of monopoly if it carefully and legally shares its technology with a few select partners who thoroughly appreciate the dangers associated with MNT (especially the critical dangers of uncontrolled AI and unstable arms races), the need to avoid them, and the consequent need to avoid further disseminating the basic technology. If these partners compete in the production and sale of relatively safe MNT products, it is possible that the market generally will be seen as saturated and further entrants will be discouraged. This decision would constitute a non-secretive alternative to the earlier prospect of inflating the apparent cost and difficulty of MNT development, although both strategies could be pursued sequentially. In the case of such a strategy, as in contemporary oligopoly arrangements, branding will become an extremely important part of profit maximization. A more trusted brand probably would be able to charge a substantial premium, especially for nanomedical products and services once those are developed. d) First Mover Advantages A large fraction of the profitability associated with nanomedicine, and to a lesser degree that associated with any new MNT product, is likely to occur during the period of initial release. This is true because MNT products often will solve problems cleanly and completely, leaving no significant vestigial market. For instance, one of the first novel nanomedical devices produced using MNT is likely to be a powder of biocompatible glucose oxygen fuel cells with internal temperature sensors to avoid excess waste heat and a binding site for later removal from the bloodstream. The purpose of this device would be simply to burn fuel, producing waste heat. From the public’s perspective it will be a rapid weight loss infusion capable of safely producing one to two pounds of weight loss per day (or several times that in extremely cold weather or while the body is immersed in cool water). Once this system is safely developed and successfully marketed, the market effectively will be gone. People may continue to become overweight, but the world’s accumulated pool of overweight people willing to use nanomedicine will be expended. Those overweight people who are reluctant to use new medical technologies will surely still prefer, when they eventually decide to use one, to use the established brand even if it costs somewhat more than its competition, as its safety will have been more thoroughly established. Furthermore, later nanomedical devices will incorporate the weight loss function as a mere side effect of their other capabilities, making this design obsolete. In other fields, the advantages from safety, branding, superior R&D, and expansion into a technological frontier will not favor the first mover as completely, but it is a basic economic result that, all else being equal, oligopoly quantity competition leaves first movers with dominant market share even in the long run.[3] Given the above result, are competing MNT producers likely to engage in the alternation of de facto collusion and quantity or monopolistic competition typical of contemporary oligopolies? The simple answer is yes, at least in the short term, as this behavior maximizes short run profits for all competitors under the constraints imposed by antitrust law and prisoner's dilemmas. However, MNT will be associated with novel productive powers that may call the default assumption into doubt. For instance, the traditional MNT vision of home manufacturing, the software metaphor of unlimited manufacturing capacity matching production precisely to demand, and even the growing paradigm of online agent-based purchasing all suggest price competition as a plausible alternative. Still, there seem to be few large examples of actual price competition in the world of retail, even where they would be most expected, such as in the sale of bottled water, public domain IP, internet retailing, and the like. Even freelance service work such as housekeeping, therapy, tutoring, and most other examples of work by the self employed are far from perfectly competitive, with agencies matching consumers to producers and keeping large commissions and with many producers spending more time searching for clients than working, and demanding far more for an hour of work than the value of an hour of their time. By reducing the scale of manufacture, in addition to improving the ability to match supply to demand, MNT and nanoblock[4] assembly seem likely to produce a world where retail is relatively more important and wholesale less. Wal-Mart or its successor still may sell MNT-built products, but if they do, they probably will sell them primarily through large factory/grocery stores rather than from giant wholesale stores, as the combination of a nanofactory with virtual reality environments for trying out products will greatly reduce the necessary floor space and inventory space. It is also reasonable to suggest that members of a much wealthier society will be less inclined to travel substantial distances in order to shop, and less likely to accept uninteresting work for under ten dollars an hour. Smaller stores that offer a better atmosphere and knowledgeable service thus will have both more customers and less difficulty finding employees. As a result, brands will be easily differentiated and price competition will be even less prevalent than it is today. The sale of energy will provide the first MNT mover with yet another advantage over later competitors. If claims can be established to solar energy streams sufficient to satisfy global energy demand, and environmental laws can be passed to restrict the utilization of solar energy streams other than those initially tapped, competitors may have to pay a larger amount for solar energy inputs than first movers. At this point, it is still far from clear whether the developers of MNT will or should choose to publicize their achievement. Their decision probably will be driven in part by the nature of the company that makes the final enabling innovations, and in part by the intensity of the technological competition. If MNT is developed in a world where it is still widely considered a retro-futurist fantasy, competition will be much less intense than in one where it is developed as the result of intense international competition. I personally expect a scenario reminiscent of that accompanying the birth pangs of the airplane, i.e. many competitors all over the world but no very large and competent concerted efforts aiming at a technology that was still taken by consensus to be impossible despite a technological infrastructure that was making its achievement noticeably less difficult every year. In such a scenario, a private company that wishes to utilize MNT productive capabilities will be able to do so rather overtly without creating widespread awareness of what is happening. Inexpensive solar panels are surely within the range of what they can publicly produce, but rapidly deployed macroscale floating solar oil factories are not. In a world where MNT is seen as completely discredited, or in one where ubiquitous but mundane “nanotechnology” had made Drexlerian predictions seem as quaint as those once made about nuclear energy or space travel, even the solar oil factories might not lead to widespread correct conclusions without an accurate explanation; conversely, if MNT was the 21st century’s space race, there would be little point in secrecy and every reason to develop and market all important applications possible applications as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, it is hard to imagine a world where the replacement of traditional industry by molecular manufacturing is taken for granted by everyone even moderately future-oriented in the same way that today all such people see as inevitable the digital replacement of analogue film-making, Chinese dominance of durable goods manufacture, or the transition to HDTV. The economic and political havoc that would be expected to result from a widespread belief in truly radically near future change is difficult to calculate, and might even be sufficient to make such a prophesy self-preventing. For this reason among others, it is fair to say that even weeks after the development of MNT is announced, the majority of investors still will not know about it. Even those who do will probably understand it less well than today’s typical science fiction author, and will thus not base any informed investment decisions on their knowledge of MNT. It is also easy to imagine a near-future world filled with constant inaccurate claims of MNT breakthroughs, such that accurate information would not trigger immediate market adjustments upon its release. Part 2. MNT Risk Management a) Economic Disruption Much has been made of the large number of jobs that might be eliminated with the advent of molecular manufacturing. If all or nearly all jobs were to rapidly become unnecessary, the resulting economic disruption would not necessarily cause major hardship, as some have feared. However, most work is not associated with the production of products that can easily be replaced by MNT. Instead, early MNT products will almost eliminate certain sectors, such as manufacturing; will greatly reduce the need for workers in some others, such as mining, utilities, construction, and transportation/warehousing of goods; will have little direct impact on the demand for work in some fields, such as educational services, management, and food services; and will greatly increase the demand for a few professions, especially information technology and possibly scientific and technical services. Theoretically, capital can be substituted for most varieties of labor, and MNT also will greatly expand the ease of creation of capital while devaluing existing capital, but it will take time for new capital to replace most workers. For instance, in the short term, trash-collecting robots are unlikely, but in the long term, home recycling and incineration units are likely. I estimate that MNT will make 10% - 20% of all current US jobs obsolete within a year of development, 20% - 40% within two years, and in the absence of strong AI will make 60% - 80% of current work unnecessary within a decade of development, as more powerful tools multiply the capabilities of service workers in fields like waste management and accommodations/food services. Many workers probably will be retained by their employers for months or years after their services are no longer necessary due either to contractual stipulations or simply to slow managerial reaction times. In addition, laws may be passed further restricting the elimination of jobs, but ultimately obsolete industries will disappear even with government life support and will eliminate jobs by closing if they can’t do so with layoffs. At the same time that many jobs disappear, so will many workers. Great uncertainty, high discount rates, high interest rates, and novel low cost lifestyle options will provide many workers with strong incentives to leave their jobs and either retire or try to found businesses more suited to the new economy. This will drive the expenses faced by many employers upwards, as noted earlier, but will do little to mitigate the problem of unemployment, as the workers who have the capital to invest and retire are by definition not those most threatened by the loss of their jobs and typically cannot be easily replaced by even larger numbers of inappropriately trained workers. Most of the neediest workers will be covered by state unemployment insurance, which will have the added benefit of increasing non-discretionary governmental spending. Increases in the duration of unemployment payouts should be lobbied for, but even if these are successful, more will be needed. Further subsidies for the unemployed may be possible through investments in companies (such as MyRichUncle.com) that give loans in exchange to a fraction of the borrower’s future earnings. However, several million people still will be in need of both money to live on and meaningful work that they are not able to find for themselves. Dealing with those people is not a core business function, but providing low cost goods to any agencies that show competence in doing so (groups such as Habitat for Humanity, etc.) probably will be a very sound investment in good will. By contrast, although it would be possible to support all of the displaced people or hire them for make-work, spending money directly to do so generally would be expected to aggravate the resentment that was supposed to be mitigated. One of the most important things to do when mitigating resentment is to work hard to fight the impression that people with MNT can do anything and that all remaining problems are therefore their fault. For PR purposes, it is probably best to downplay what the technology is capable of. This also will tend to reduce governmental fear, public paranoia, and pressure to share dangerous technologies with militaries that cannot be trusted with them. b) Abuse of Novel Capabilities The second major class of risk that must be avoided is that associated with intentional abuse. This includes everything from the production of self-replicating robots to rapid military build-ups to universal intrusive surveillance (even, possibly, surveillance of brain activity, hence of thoughts). The extreme number of potentially disastrous abuses that MNT lends itself to is a very strong argument for making every possible effort to either maintain secrecy regarding MNT techniques, or at least to limiting access to extremely trustworthy parties. Many other essays in this collection will discuss the consequences of failing to maintain secrecy, but for the purposes of this paper, it should suffice to assert that so long as MNT remains tightly controlled these risks should be manageable. c) Dangerous Consequences of Excessive Computing Power The final and most critical danger associated with MNT is that it will lead to the release of massive computing power and the acquisition of neurological knowledge that will make it easier to develop AI (artificial intelligence) than to control it, leading to a total loss of control and human extinction. It is obviously best to respond to this by being extremely judicious with respect to the distribution of devices for studying the brain and by limiting the available computing power available for a dollar to a level significantly greater than that being produced by competing companies but far less than what could be made available. It is best if the gap between available MNT computers and traditional computers is great enough to dominate the market and end incremental development of computing power, but small enough not to contribute substantially to reducing the cost of parallel projects aimed at developing MNT or AI. Despite such precautions, MNT development will accelerate AI development in many ways. The most significant of these may be the increased ability to spend time on long-term personal projects resulting from increased personal freedom. The largest risks are likely to be of an internal origin, as some of the thousands of researchers in the company may attempt to evolve an AI on internal nanocomputers. An obvious way to ameliorate this problem is to limit design and production to low power computers, or to dedicated computers for running molecular simulations and designing products, or for other very specific purposes. In the long run though, this is a stopgap measure. Some strategy must be developed for ensuring that mankind is not accidentally wiped out by an AI. The scope of this problem goes beyond that of this paper, but it is probably a good starting place to assert the desirability of doing whatever is possible to direct global R&D towards the development of technology for making people more intelligent and away from technology for making machines more intelligent. Ultimately, it does appear that AI can be developed safely and that preventing unsafe AI permanently should be possible, but it also appears that the level of intelligence required to safely develop AI is approximately independent of the available level of computing power, while that required to unsafely develop AI decreases with computing power. For this reason, increasing intelligence and reducing available computing power both contribute to risk reduction. Anti-aging technology also may contribute, because it provides a de facto increase in the amount of thought that a person can ultimately apply to any given problem, although the development of anti-aging technology will be strongly commercially and PR driven in any event, and thus requires no further justification. End Notes 1. “Molecular Manufacturing: What, Why and How” by Chris Phoenix (http://wise-nano.org/w/Doing_MM) 2. See “Dangers of Molecular Manufacturing” (http://www.crnano.org/dangers.htm) 3. In price competition, producers compete to sell for the lowest possible price. They choose what price they will sell at and then sell as many as the public demands at that price. In practice, this requires that the company be able to match supply precisely to demand. Economically this is equivalent to perfect competition and eliminates all profit. In quantity competition, producers sell undifferentiated products to wholesalers, setting the quantity sold to maximize profits. As the number of competitors increases this becomes more like perfect competition because each producer has increasingly little incentive to restrict quantity in order to maintain demand. By committing to a particular level of production in advance, earlier entrants can establish equilibria where they sell larger volumes than later entrants. With a linear demand curve, each entrant will sell half the volume of its predecessor. In monopolistic competition, companies sell similar but branded goods and use marketing and reputation to maintain a willingness to pay a premium over the market price for branded products. Branded goods are imperfect substitutes with high cross elasticities of demand, so as the price of one brand increases, consumers gradually switch over to its competition. 4. For an explanation of nanoblock manufacturing, see “Safe Utilization of Advanced Nanotechnology” by Chris Phoenix and Mike Treder (http://www.crnano.org/safe.htm). About the Author Michael Vassar has been analyzing the likely impacts of nanotechnology and other transformative changes for Futurist.com for three years. He lives in New York City where he divides his time between Columbia University and working with Internet-based startup businesses.

Could Nanotechnology Revolutionize Natural Gas Industry?

JohnT — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 17:41:44 +0000

Nanotechnology could revolutionize the natural gas industry across the whole lifecycle from extraction to pollution reduction or be an enormous missed opportunity, claim two industry experts writing in Inderscience's International Journal of Nanotechnology. They suggest that nanotechnology could help us extract more fuel and feedstock hydrocarbons from dwindling resources. However, industry inertia and a lack of awareness of the benefits could mean a missed opportunity. According to Saeid Mokhatab and Brian Towler of the Chemical and Petroleum Engineering Department, at the University of Wyoming, in Laramie, there are many opportunities for the industry to exploit nanotechnology. However, there is a traditional lack of innovation in the exploration and production sector, a perception of high costs, new risks, and a general lack of awareness of the benefits of nanotechnology. The researchers have now described the potential benefits of nanotechnology, which could change that perception. Mokhatab and Towler point out that nanomaterials, such as nanotubes or engineered porous minerals, might be used in the gas field or other source to improve the efficiency of extraction of a wide variety of hydrocarbon fuel compounds and chemical feedstocks. Similarly, related nanomaterials might be used to improve purification and storage of hydrocarbons, while yet other nanomaterials might be used in environmental remediation, allowing contaminated sites to be cleaned up of harmful pollutants. Nanomaterials might even be developed as corrosion inhibitors for equipment and at the same time, more sophisticated nanotechnology could be developed as solid-state gas sensors for air pollution monitoring. "The past decade has seen explosive growth worldwide in the synthesis and study of a wide range of nanostructured materials, the building blocks of nanotechnology," the researchers explain, "Investigations of mechanical, chemical, electrical, magnetic, and optical behavior of nanostructured materials have demonstrated the possibilities to engineer the properties of these new materials for a wide range of applications." The researchers add that as readily accessible hydrocarbon reserves become depleted, the oil and gas exploration and production industry faces increasing technical challenges. These challenges boil down to increased costs and limitations on drilling and production technologies. ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2007)

CRN task force : Essays on molecular manufacturing implications, Issue 1

Benj — Mon, 08 May 2006 20:12:26 +0000

Nanotechnology—the precise engineering of tiny but powerful machines—is advancing quickly, leaping from the pages of science fiction into world-class research laboratories, and coming soon to a desktop near you. Like electricity or computers before it, nanotechnology will bring greatly improved efficiency and productivity in many areas of human endeavor. In its mature form, known as molecular nanotechnology (MNT) or molecular manufacturing (MM), it will have significant impact on almost all industries and all parts of society. Personal nanofactories (PNs) may offer better built, longer lasting, cleaner, safer, and smarter products for the home, for communications, for medicine, for transportation, for agriculture, and for industry in general. However, as a general-purpose technology, MNT will be dual-use, meaning that in addition to its civilian applications, it will have military uses as well—making far more powerful weapons and tools of surveillance. Thus, it represents not only wonderful benefits for humanity, but also grave risks. Progress toward developing the technical requirements for desktop molecular manufacturing is moving forward rapidly. In the eleven essays described below, you will learn how PNs will bring radical changes to society, and to your life. Several factors will come together to make MM truly revolutionary. * Cost: One PN can build another PN as easily as any other product, so nanofactories will be neither scarce nor expensive. Labor costs will also be minimal, since PNs will be automated. Small carbon-based molecules (feedstock) are quite inexpensive. * Exponential manufacturing: One PN can be made to build two, or a small system can build one twice as big. Working in parallel, manufacturing capacity can double every few hours. Within just a few months, a single molecular manipulation device could be expanded to PN's with a combined capacity of thousands of tons per hour. The PN architecture can even scale to individual factories of industrial size. * Precision: Atoms of each type are identical with each other, and products made from precisely placed atoms also will be identical—more reliable and easier to manufacture. * High performance: Small machines are more powerful than large ones—perhaps a million times more powerful, when shrunk to nano-scale—and precise materials are perhaps 100 times stronger. Also, precise surfaces can have extremely low friction and wear. Nanofactory-built products could include large numbers of small, high-performance machines. * General-purpose manufacturing: Structures will be made by automated placement of tiny building blocks, so changing the program (blueprint) will change the product. A wide range of components and products is possible, including computers, sensors, motors, and displays, and combinations thereof. * Rapid prototyping: Because a nanofactory will make a complete product in a few minutes from any given blueprint, new product designs could be built and tested almost immediately, and at very low cost. In August 2005, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN), a non-profit research and advocacy organization, announced the formation of a Task Force convened to study the societal implications of this rapidly emerging technology. Bringing together a diverse group of world-class experts from multiple disciplines, CRN is spearheading an historic, collaborative effort to develop comprehensive recommendations for the safe and responsible use of nanotechnology. This initial collection of essays written by members of the CRN Task Force explores many of the most worrisome implications of molecular manufacturing. From military and security issues to human enhancement, artificial intelligence, and more, we take a look under the lid of Pandora’s box to see what the future might hold. A second collection of essays exploring different topics will form the next issue of this journal. Reacting to the huge risks of MM, some have proposed that we outlaw it altogether. In our first essay, “Nanotechnology Dangers and Defenses,” inventor and author Ray Kurzweil looks at the challenge of allowing development while preventing disaster. In “Molecular Manufacturing: Too Dangerous to Allow?”, Robert A. Freitas Jr. examines the questions and pulls no punches. “Nano-Guns, Nano-Germs, and Nano-Steel,” an essay by Mike Treder, explores the troubling topic of nanotech-enabled warfare, and then Tom Cowper, an expert in policing and criminology, offers his special perspective in “Molecular Manufacturing and 21st Century Policing.” In “The Need For Limits,” Chris Phoenix explains that we may face unprecedented risks as MM’s revolutionary potential dissolves the barriers that keep us safe. After Giulio Prisco explores the real-world challenge of “Globalization and Open Source Nano Economy,” Damien Broderick provides a broad historical perspective of the relationship between society and technology in “Cultural Dominants and Differential MNT Uptake.” Advanced nanotechnology could go well beyond making better consumer goods and better weapons. In “Nanoethics and Human Enhancement,” professional ethicists Patrick Lin and Fritz Allhoff look into the controversial aspects of using MNT to change our bodies and minds. Noted futurist Natasha Vita-More then lays out the problems our grey matter could face in “Strategic Sustainable Brain.” Computers built by nanofactories may be millions of times more powerful than anything we have today. The potential for creating world-changing artificial intelligence is examined by scientist J. Storrs Hall in “Is AI Near a Takeoff Point?” Finally, if some of our worst scenarios become real, we may face truly existential dilemmas. These are surveyed in depth by best-selling author David Brin in “Singularities and Nightmares: The Range of Our Futures.” As editors of these essays, we will be pleased if you are entertained and informed. But we will be further gratified if you are inspired to learn more. We hope you’ll want to get involved in the vital work of raising awareness and finding effective solutions to the challenges presented to the world by advanced nanotechnology. Mike Treder, Executive Director Chris Phoenix, Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License.

CRN task force : Essays on molecular manufacturing implications, Issue 2

Benj — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 21:31:53 +0000

Eleven original essays about the implications of molecular manufacturing — an advanced form of nanotechnology — were posted here last month. Written by members of a Global Task Force on Implications and Policy, some of the essays offered promising opportunities, while others raised troubling concerns. Now we have eleven new essays that delve into additional possibilities and impacts of the technology, again authored by members of CRN’s Global Task Force. All twenty-two articles were edited by Mike Treder and Chris Phoenix, co-founders of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN). The mandate of the CRN Task Force is to thoroughly investigate the societal and environmental implications of advanced nanotechnology; to separate real from fictional; and to develop comprehensive, responsible, and workable recommendations. We began this focused effort in August 2005 with a few core people, including Ray Kurzweil (CEO of Kurzweil Technologies), Jerry Glenn (Director of the AC/UNU Millennium Project), David Brin (author of The Transparent Society), Nick Bostrom (Director, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University), and Robert A. Freitas Jr. (author of Nanomedicine). Since then, our Task Force has grown to more than 65 people on five continents. We are continuing to add others with diverse backgrounds and points of view. Additional experts in geopolitics, economics, ethics, ecology, and international policy formation will be recruited. Without mutual understanding and cooperation on a global level, the hazardous potentials of advanced nanotechnology could spiral out of control and deny any hope of realizing the benefits to society. Of course, reaching conclusions will not be a quick process. The early work of the CRN Task Force has underscored our realization that there are no simple answers or simple solutions. Our plan from the beginning has been to concentrate first on defining the challenge: What risks do we really face? How do they relate to each other? What is most important to know in order to design wise and effective policies for molecular manufacturing? The essays you are about to read approach these questions from a variety of different directions. In our opening piece, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom sets the stage with an overview of previous transformative technologies and their ethical challenges in “Nanoethics and Technological Revolutions: A Précis.” Following that, Michael Buerger, a Professor of Criminal Justice at Bowling Green State University takes us “From The Enlightenment to N-Lightenment,” providing historical perspective and amusing personal commentary. “What Price Freedom?” is an important and disturbing analysis by Robert A. Freitas Jr., a leading nanotechnology researcher, of the difficult dilemmas we may face when confronted by a choice between the danger of freedom and the security of tyranny. If personal nanofactories supplant a large fraction of traditional manufacturing, distribution, and retailing, then companies and their employees could be impacted by the millions. In “The (Needed) New Economics of Abundance,” entrepreneur and computer expert Steve Burgess shows why existing economic structures may be unable to withstand the strain, and why the adoption of new paradigms could be essential. Robert A. Freitas Jr. offers a contrasting view in “Economic Impact of the Personal Nanofactory,” his second essay for this collection. Futurist and business consultant Michael Vassar looks at both commercial and security issues in “Corporate Cornucopia: Examining the Special Implications of Commercial MNT Development,” and then Australian social scientist Don Maclurcan tackles the topic of “Molecular Manufacturing and the Developing World: Looking to Nanotechnology for Answers.” In “Considering Military and Ethical Implications of Nanofactory-level Nanotechnology,” computer engineer Brian Wang provides a deeply researched exploration of nanotech impacts on future warfare. Deborah Osborne, a crime analyst and book author, offers her expert views in “Molecular Manufacturing and the Need for Crime Science.” How can we manage the unprecedented power of nanotechnology? Computer scientist Tom Craver describes some approaches that could make a difference in “Safer Molecular Manufacturing Through Nanoblocks.” And, finally, author and activist Douglas Mulhall confronts us with some tough ethical (and survival) questions in his essay, “Are We Enlightened Guardians, Or Are We Apes Designing Humans?” Covering topics from commerce to criminology, from ethics to economics, and from our remote past to our distant future, this collection of essays illustrates the profound transformation that nanotechnology will have on all aspects of human society. Progress toward developing the technical requirements for desktop molecular manufacturing is moving forward rapidly. The ideas you will learn about here are not just interesting speculation, but are very real challenges that we must prepare to meet in the near future. Mike Treder, Executive Director Chris Phoenix, Director of Research Center for Responsible Nanotechnology Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2.