Re: NANO: Custom molecules (gulp!)

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Sat, 27 Nov 1999 17:45:32 -0600

Spike Jones wrote:
>
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
> > http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/corn-bmo112399.html
> >
> > ...We're all going to die.
>
> Eliezer, let me make sure I understand your theory. If humans
> develop nanotech before the singularity, then the notion is that
> it will get away from us by some means, and we all die from
> grey goo?

I'm not worried about grey goo. Any half-sane designer should be able to design systems that simply aren't vulnerable to the problem.

What I'm worried about is nanowar. Now that I'm finally studying history (read _The Guns of August_ on WWI, working on _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ about WWII), I become more and more convinced that the weapons *will* be developed, and, having been developed, *will* be used. Real wars, not little pretend wars like we have nowadays, are fought with every possible tool.

> But if the singularity comes first, then the resulting
> AI develops nanotech and we [in some form] have a fighting
> chance of survival?

Yep.

> The notion sounded absurd to me at first, but I must admit
> it grows on one with consideration. spike

Yep. 

-- 
           sentience@pobox.com          Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
        http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS           Typing in Dvorak          Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians   Heading for Singularity   There Is A Better Way