How Do We Safeguard Against This?
- Thread starter CuttingEdge100
- Start date
I fully expect that, once (if?) self-replicating robots become a reality, they will be everywhere and in everything. There won't be a way to put the genie back in the bottle. The governments of the world will have to create some sort of "anti-virus" bot-net that can seek out and destroy harmful machines. The bots will be omnipresent, invisible, and act as a sensor net over almost every square meter of the planet.
And people bitch about cctv?
The worse would be self-replicating nanobots. If that happened, the world as we know it would be over.
And not neccesarily in a bad way either.
I fully expect that, once (if?) self-replicating robots become a reality, they will be everywhere and in everything. There won't be a way to put the genie back in the bottle. The governments of the world will have to create some sort of "anti-virus" bot-net that can seek out and destroy harmful machines. The bots will be omnipresent, invisible, and act as a sensor net over almost every square meter of the planet.
And people bitch about cctv?
Yes, very Diamond Age. Turns the whole atmo into one big nanocloud defense/law enforcement grid/immune system.
ROTFLMRO (Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Rectum Off)
I rectum I'll stop in a little while...as soon as I rectumize this isn't funny anymore...
Newtype Alpha,
If it could reproduce, it could potentially out-reproduce everything on earth.
Peter The Younger,
And is this necessarily a good thing? I mean we already have the means to seriously violate people's privacy and yield a very efficient means of law-enforcement as it currently is. As for national defense we can do an excellent job as it is (especially if we were just concerned with efficiency)
The Constitution isn't about just efficiency, it's to allow a government to do it's job sufficiently well without trampling over everybody's freedom and rights. Personally, without any true privacy and freedom, what point is there to life?
Personally, I think it would be better for an entire civilization and all it's creations to go extinct than to for it to reach a point where it becomes completely oppressive, all-intrusive, and unstoppable.
CuttingEdge
If it could reproduce, it could potentially out-reproduce everything on earth.
Peter The Younger,
And is this necessarily a good thing? I mean we already have the means to seriously violate people's privacy and yield a very efficient means of law-enforcement as it currently is. As for national defense we can do an excellent job as it is (especially if we were just concerned with efficiency)
The Constitution isn't about just efficiency, it's to allow a government to do it's job sufficiently well without trampling over everybody's freedom and rights. Personally, without any true privacy and freedom, what point is there to life?
Personally, I think it would be better for an entire civilization and all it's creations to go extinct than to for it to reach a point where it becomes completely oppressive, all-intrusive, and unstoppable.
CuttingEdge
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So what? The common cold can already do this. MOST viruses do. Something that small doesn't have alot of power, though, nor does it consume alot of resources.
OTOH, as per Diamond Age references, a self-replicating nanorobot swarm could only be dismantled by another nanorobot swarm and a nanowar is fought in the air all around you. The world would suddenly become a very dusty place, but the potential benefits of a utility fog would far outweigh the pitfalls.
Newtype_Alpha,
But it might be able to do so more efficiently and faster than any natural pathogen. They also might be destructive to human life.
CuttingEdge100
But it might be able to do so more efficiently and faster than any natural pathogen. They also might be destructive to human life.
CuttingEdge100
Do you ALWAYS see a demise of the human race when new technologies present themselves?
I agree that there are dangers, but what exactly are we supposed to do?
Stagnate?
No thank you.
Our society is messed up as it is and ineffective to begin with. The last thing we need is to completely stop technological innovation.
Solution to potential problems?
We adapt.
Which I would be quite happy with. More efficient means it does fewer unnecessary things like secrete harmful toxins or hijacks living cells in its replication process.
Just another carcinogen we have to worry about (if they're harmful by accident). Or just another disease (if they're not).
OTOH, if self-replicating nanorobots are feasible, then they also double as the cure.
Newtype_Alpha
Technically depending on how fast it reproduced and how destructive it would be, it could rapidly kill all life on earth
Technically depending on how fast it reproduced and how destructive it would be, it could rapidly kill all life on earth
So could an ordinary virus. How are nanomachines any different?
Answer: they're not. And the only way they could be that destructive to life is if they're specifically DESIGNED to destroy life. That sort of thing just doesn't happen by accident.
Newtype Alpha,
Often artificial creations are capable of doing things faster, more efficiently, and better than their natural counterparts.
With that said, that is easily a possibility.
Often artificial creations are capable of doing things faster, more efficiently, and better than their natural counterparts.
With that said, that is easily a possibility.
Naturally. Which is why their ACCIDENTALLY out-producing other
organisms is so unlikely: a machine that spends that much energy doing things it isn't designed to do is, by definition, a highly inefficient machine.
We may have to worry about a nanotech weapon specifically designed to kill people, but even in that case it has all the same hazards as an ordinary bioweapon.
john titor
Captain
Maybe you don't defend against it. Life is inherently risky. The odds of things like this happening are pretty low compared to being killed in a car crash. Perhaps one way to prevent the frequency of such situations would be for the West to revise its policy in the ME
