I wish you the best of luck in your efforts to prevent a full-scale
nanowar from developing, but be aware that, in the long run, the task is
hopeless. Your policy should be driven by these three goals:
1) Hold off nanowar for at least a couple of years after the invention
of nanocomputers.
2) Accelerate the development of nanocomputers to the maximum possible
limit. I need at least 10^17 ops/sec on 10^14 bytes of memory with as
much interconnection bandwidth as you can manage. I probably can't
brute-force it unless you can give me more power by an order of
magnitude, i.e. 10^21 ops/sec on 10^16 bytes, which gives me a hundred
times human capacity running at a hundred times human speed. If you can
give me 10^24 ops/sec on 10^19 bytes, I can run an evolving population;
if you can give me high intercommunication bandwidth between the
processors, I can evolve modules rather than individuals.
3) Get those nanocomputers into the hands of Hofstadter, Lenat,
Moravec, and Eliezer. If you can keep nanocomputing free of regulation,
great, but if not, make sure you have enough influence with the Powers
That Be to get four or five licenses.
This reduces the problem to manageable proportions.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/beyond.html
Member, Extropy Institute
Senior Associate, Foresight Institute
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