Responsible Nanotechnology

Is the end of privacy near?

If we can survive the danger of nanotech weapons, wars, and possible global dictatorship, the next biggest controversy to arise from molecular manufacturing may be the loss of privacy.

Nanotechnology law expert (and CRN Task Force member) Mohamad Mova Al 'Afghani says, "I think any laws that protect privacy will finally go to extinction, as privacy is slowly-but-surely being eroded by technology."

On our Dangerous Knowledge thread, commenters have been debating the relationship between surveillance and security. For US citizens, the issue is especially timely right now. You can be sure that it won't go away tomorrow.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

CRN Global Task Force Essays

In August 2005, the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology announced the formation of a Global 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.

Many of the profound implications of molecular manufacturing (MM) are explored in an initial collection of 11 new essays, all written by members of the CRN Task Force and published in the March 27 issue of Nanotechnology Perceptions. From military and security issues to human enhancement, artificial intelligence, and more, these articles take a look under the lid of Pandora's box to see what the future might hold. A second collection of essays exploring additional concerns will form the next issue of Nanotechnology Perceptions.

Here is a brief description of the initial set of articles:

Reacting to the huge risks of MM, some advocate that all research be halted. Our first two essays, "Nanotechnology Dangers and Defenses" by inventor and author Ray Kurzweil and "Molecular Manufacturing: Too Dangerous to Allow?" by Nanomedicine author Robert A. Freitas Jr., explore these issues. They survey the dangers, discuss ways to mitigate them, and analyze the weaknesses of relinquishment.

"Nano-Guns, Nano-Germs, and Nano-Steel," an essay by Mike Treder, explores the troubling topic of nanotech-enabled warfare. 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 MM 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 the 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, CRN Executive Director
Chris Phoenix, CRN Director of Research

Note: The opinions expressed in these essays are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, nor of its parent organization, World Care.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

The Biggest Problem of All

Molecular manufacturing will give its wielders extreme power and has the potential to remove or bypass many of today's limits, including laws. That could lead to a planet-wide dictatorship, or to any of several forms of irreversible destruction. Perhaps the biggest problem of all will be how to develop a system of near-absolute power that will not become corrupt.

- From "The Need for Limits" by Chris Phoenix.

Posted today at KurzweilAI.net:

The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN) has created a series of new research papers in which industry experts predict profound impacts of nanotechnology on society. The first set of 11 of these original essays by members of CRN's Global Task Force will appear in the March 27 issue of the journal Nanotechnology Perceptions. KurzweilAI.net will syndicate these essays over that week. In this preview, Chris Phoenix, CRN's director of research, presents the challenge of how to deal with possible unintended consequences of molecular manufacturing.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Nanotechnology Perceptions

Nanotechnology Perceptions is a peer-reviewed academic journal of the Collegium Basilea in Basel, Switzerland. The issue dated March 27, 2006, is devoted completely to a series of essays written by members of the CRN Global Task Force.

This is how nanotechnology is introduced and described in the journal:

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, MM 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.

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.

Progress toward developing the technical requirements for desktop molecular manufacturing is moving forward rapidly. The March 27 issue of Nanotechnology Perceptions begins to illustrate the radical changes that personal nanofactories will bring to society, and to all of our lives.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

2020: Advanced Computing

From Nature, a fascinating series on 2020 Computing, with short essays from eight different scientists and science journalists answering the question: What will the relationship between computing and science bring us over the next 15 years?

Our favorite is this one from Declan Butler on "Everything, Everywhere"...

In their current, mostly desktop, incarnation, computers used for science usually come into their own quite late in the process of inquiry. Questions are asked, the data that might answer them identified, that data gathered — and only then does the computer start to play a role. In the future, this set up could be reversed. Computers could go from being back-office number-crunchers to field operatives. Twenty-four hours a day, year-in, year-out, they could measure every conceivable variable of an ecosystem or a human body, at whatever scale might be appropriate, from the nanometric to the continental.

These new computers would take the form of networks of sensors with data-processing and transmission facilities built in. Millions or billions of tiny computers — called 'motes', 'nodes' or 'pods' — would be embedded into the fabric of the real world. They would act in concert, sharing the data that each of them gathers so as to process them into meaningful digital representations of the world. Researchers could tap into these 'sensor webs' to ask new questions or test hypotheses. Even when the scientists were busy elsewhere, the webs would go on analysing events autonomously, modifying their behaviour to suit their changing experience of the world.

If this scenario sounds far fetched, imagine the owner of a mainframe in the 1970s asking why it wasn't sitting on millions of desks and laps worldwide. An absurd question — to which the answer was "it's just a matter of time". The world's stock of computing power, and the number of devices over which it is distributed, has increased exponentially since then, as has the capacity of networking technology. These trends show no sign of slowing down, and that makes pervasive sensor nets not so much possible as inevitable. One does not need to be a visionary to see that soon, tiny devices with the power of today's desktops will be cheap enough to put everywhere.

Gaetano Borriello, a computer scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, argues that such widely distributed computing power will trigger a paradigm shift as great as that brought about by the development of experimental science itself. "We will be getting real-time data from the physical world for the first time on a large scale."

READ MORE

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Being Open About New Tech

Uh-oh...

The science of nanotechnology could founder on the same negative publicity that dogged genetics unless more is done to assess risks, a Swiss report warns.

Only two of the 32 companies in Switzerland and Germany surveyed by the institute had investigated the effects of absorption of nanoparticles by living organisms. Three-quarters admitted they had not carried out risk assessments on research or on their products.

One in five had examined whether products containing nanoparticles could be toxic while a quarter did not know whether tests had been carried out.

Okay, the focus of this article is Frame 1 nanotechnologies, not molecular manufacturing (MM). But the failings identified will affect MM unless they are adequately addressed.

Part of the problem, according to Michael Siegrist, a researcher at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is a lack of guidelines in Switzerland and many other countries to regulate the industry.

"One reason for this lack of risk assessment is that companies and researchers do not know what they should do. There are no industry standards or government regulations yet," he told swissinfo. . .

Siegrist added that the nanotechnology industry in Switzerland realises that it is in its own interests to carry out proper risk assessment but it favours self-regulation as opposed to government interference.

So, there are "no industry standards or government regulations." Are there risks?

"It is also difficult to find qualified people to carry out assessments even if a company has the money and the will to do so," said Siegrist.

Products are being made...risks are uncertain...research is lacking...

Who should be concerned about all this?

"The most immediate threat is to the researchers and workers dealing with these nanoparticles," Georg Karlaganis of the environment agency told swissinfo. "We need to develop a dialogue with scientists, the industry and the public."

Yes, dialogue is urgently needed, not to mention more research, and more openness.

A year ago, in the Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report, Josh Wolfe wrote:

Nanotech is still in its infancy, and scientists are just beginning to understand how it can be used to improve products and processes in fields ranging from semiconductors to medicine and energy. The last thing it needs is a "societal debate" and intense government scrutiny. How can you intelligently discuss and regulate something that is still in the discovery and development stage, before it really exists in a practical manufacturing sense?

Ironically, Josh warned that all this "could snowball into the kind of publicity that created a backlash against genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and Monsanto."

It seems clear to us, however, that candor about the risks plus openness about purposes and processes is the best way to avoid a backlash.

If industry -- in the US, Europe, or elsewhere -- is not prepared to do the risk assessment, prepare acceptable guidelines, and effectively regulate themselves, then governments will have no choice. Their citizens will demand action.

Governments also have a stake. Unless they act now to engage research facilities, businesses, and NGOs in finding legitimate answers and communicating those answers to the public, all their efforts (and investment) in trying to build an industry will falter.

From CRN's perspective, the greatest concern here is that nanotech development will run afoul of legislators, litigators, activists, and pundits even before molecular manufacturing is on the table. If that happens, it will be much harder to conduct reasonable discussions about the deeply serious social, ethical, and environmental implications of advanced nanotechnology.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

New Risks = New Framework

Earlier this year, I was one of 30 participants to attend a workshop in Zurich organized by the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) and concerning a "Conceptual Risk Governance Framework for Nanotechnology."

At the end of two full days of presentation, discussion, and debate, I proposed that we adopt a joint statement that would reflect our views. This proved to be a difficult task, taking more than six weeks.

Here [PDF] is what finally emerged:

The majority of the participants at the January workshop agreed on the following with respect to a risk governance strategy for nanotechnology:

• The need for an inclusive, globally focused, risk governance framework addressing both short and long-term applications of nanotechnology.
• The need to ensure that the interests of all those potentially affected by nanotechnology are addressed, understood and respected by decision makers.
• The need to be cognisant of and concomitant with other global governance systems.

In addition, the participants generally agreed on:

...the categorisation of nanotechnology into two broad frames of reference based on the evolution of knowledge, level of complexity and potential social and ethical consequences, was considered to be a useful starting point from which to design effective risk governance strategies.

The first frame (Frame 1) concerned relatively simple, passive or merely reactive nanostructures with steady behaviour, while the second frame (Frame 2) focused on more complex and/or evolving-active nanostructures and nanosystems, some of which could utilise molecular devices or bio structures as building blocks.

Within Frame 2, there still is considerable variety in the significance and impact of different stages -- or "generations" -- of advanced nanotechnology. The table below shows how these generations are understood:

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

As you can see, Frame 1 includes only the 1st generation. After I made a presentation on productive nanosystems (i.e., molecular manufacturing) and proposed a 5th generation to cover that, we talked for a while and then concluded that molecular manufacturing would be viewed as part of the 4th generation.

Dividing the development of nanotechnology into these two broad "frames" is an important step in designing different governance strategies for different levels of technology. By stating that "the expected complexity and evolution" of Frame 2 nanotech will bring "unique" risks, we are saying that issues of concern in Frame 1 (e.g., nanoparticle toxicity) are not the same as those in Frame 2.

We spent considerable time during the workshop identifying potential gaps in current risk assessment and management strategies. These were grouped into three areas:

1. Technical Deficits

2. Risk Communication Deficits

3. Social Deficits

Major concerns in the third category ("Social Deficits") were:

• Broad-based and rapid changes in nanomanufacturing processes and new products may lead to a displacement of jobs and major changes in trade balances between countries at a faster pace and in multiple sectors of the economy as compared to the introduction of other technologies.
• From a trade perspective, differences in national regulations and their application may make it difficult for companies to apply standardised products and production processes. A consequential implication is that the significantly new properties and issues of nanotechnology may allow for transference of risk as products are developed in a country with weaker controls and exported worldwide.
• There is a risk that the potential of nanotechnology to address global issues such as sustainable development may be missed if nanotechnology investment policies are not sufficiently well directed. Unfocused investment may also increase the risk for an unbalanced distribution of nanotechnology benefits both within a country and worldwide.

Finally, we considered a range of proposals to address the identified gaps in current risk management.

Our group's "Social Recommendations" are stated as:

• Examine the system whereby companies and individuals can accrue intellectual property rights for basic natural processes and structures to ensure that equitable opportunities are available for manufacturers both nationally and internationally.
• Establish internationally accepted standards for nanotechnology to reduce national differences in risk governance practices and to limit barriers to trade. In addition, establish a role for an international organisation to provide a global and trusted source of risk governance information.
• Government to take the lead in developing and promoting nanotechnology innovation that is socially and environmentally beneficial as well as competitively viable.
• The risks, benefits and possibility for future technologies to catalyse societal change to be identified prior to development because of the potential significant implications of nanotechnology on human development. This is more relevant to Frame 2.
• Support research on the long-term implications of nanotechnology with respect to the human dimension. This is more relevant to Frame 2.
• International coordination of risk governance for potentially high-impact, long-term projects.
• Decision making processes regarding how choices for research and development are made to be more transparent, so that affected individuals and the public are aware of how decisions are made and on what evidence they are based. This is more relevant to Frame 2.

This is not the end of the process. The next step is to review "a practical application of the framework" at a conference on "Risk Governance of Nanotechnology: Recommendations for Managing a Global Issue" to be held on 6th and 7th July 2006 (location TBA).

To view a list of participants in the January workshop, go to Appendix A in this document [PDF].

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Nanotech & Mass Destruction

Nanotechnology and Mass Destruction: The Need for an Inner Space Treaty

This is an important article from 2002. Between the text, notes, and appendices, it's quite long; however, the first half of the article is stuff most of us already know. But then the author, Sean Howard, raises some very interesting questions -- that lead to even deeper questions.

We are immediately confronted with a decisive choice, so familiar to followers of myriad disarmament and non-proliferation discussions: what is our goal, abolition or regulation? Is the fundamental danger what 'others' might do with 'our' technology, or is the real problem the technology itself? It is possible to construct an arms control regime based on the logic of either conclusion; but it is not possible to merge both approaches.

The author describes the reactions of some physicists to the possibility of the hydrogen bomb. These scientists stated that H-bomb technology was inherently evil, and thus should not be investigated, lest the investigation itself unleash the technology directly or indirectly.

So the author seems to be drawing a dichotomy between "our technology," which responsible parties can control the use and misuse of, and "evil technology." But these are not opposites. If, as CRN believes, it's only a matter of time until molecular manufacturing (MM) could be developed in any university lab, it seems clear that only extraordinary efforts could make MM "our technology" in any meaningful sense.

CRN rejects the position that MM is inherently evil. In the hands of some actors, MM would be a potent force for good; in the hands of most, it would be a force for change, unpredictable in some ways but typically positive on balance.

So, perhaps the question boils down to: How can we regulate or even guide technology that is not "ours"? Does arms control have anything to say about this? Does policing suggest any answers? Will the "invisible hand" of market economies work to keep us safe from the variety of types of danger?

Sean Howard supplies two first-draft treaties. The first is essentially a Hippocratic Oath for scientists: nanotech is not to be used for weapons. As if that's not unlikely enough, the second is an outright prohibition. Howard acknowledges: "In the case of a treaty seeking the blanket prohibition of nanotechnology (Version B, below) the OST is self-evidently inadequate, instructive only to illustrate the gulf between a regulatory and abolitionist measure."

What do you think?

Chris Phoenix

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Land of the Rising Robot

China and India are poised to be the next economic powerhouses of the world. Or maybe not.

In a recent two-part series published by the Globalist, Professor Prabhu Guptara argues that Japan's preeminence in robotic technology may require us to reconsider the economic potential of these Asian giants.

Part One: Why the Next Decade Will Be Neither Chinese Nor Indian

Robotic technology has the potential to enhance human life in numerous ways. However, says Guptara, this technology also has the potential to become the greatest threat to humanity if it falls into the wrong hands.

Part Two: Will Japanese Robots Rule the World by 2020?

(Hat tip to Jose Cordeiro)

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Preserving Freedoms

As rapid development in nanotech applications becomes more and more apparent, discussions of nano ethics and values are becoming more common -- as they should.

A new "international magazine" called Nano Today has popped up, promising to bring "the latest nanoscience research and policy news to researchers in academia, industry, and government organizations."

From the inaugural issue, available online, we find an opinion piece by Donald Bruce on "The question of ethics."

Mr. Bruce, on behalf of the Church of Scotland's Society, Religion and Technology Project, writes:

A common view in scientific and political circles is a belief in ‘progress’ through technology to improve the human condition in its widest sense. This belief is confident of human skill and ingenuity to overcome any problem.

The current dominant economic model frames nanotechnologies in terms of their capacity for wealth generation. But another widely held view sees intervention explicitly balanced by care for our fellow human beings and attention to the impacts of our innovations on the environment. Interventions are made that respect certain limits defined by the human condition and our finite environment.

Technology is not the sole engine of progress but a tool that remains at the service of humanity, not vice versa. [emphasis his] Lastly, there are those for whom progress is entirely personal and not for the state to dictate.

He also says...

[I]t is a common misconception that technology is neutral. On the contrary, a technology reflects the values and goals of the society within which it emerges and, in turn, it may alter the values and aspirations of that society. . .

The convergence of nanotechnologies with info-, bio-, and cognitive technologies provokes a possible conflict between holistic and functional views, and between what is considered fixed and what is changeable.

Traditional presuppositions hold that there are moral or societal bounds that restrain what may be technically feasible in intervening in the human condition. These limits are drawn from insights into our religious and cultural traditions, philosophy and theology, the arts and humanities, and the social sciences.

Much of Mr. Bruce's opinion piece deals with medical ethics, a field that will -- and should -- receive a great deal of attention in policy discussions. However, the conclusion he arrives at in the paragraph below is questionable:

Nanomedicine may enable rapid readouts of our whole genome or of our body's levels of everything imaginable, but what does all that information mean? ... Lab-on-a-chip analysis may mean that my routine visit to the doctor as a result of a cough may also tell me that I have a susceptibility to colon cancer with little prospect of cure. Knowing all the information that nanomedicine could provide is not necessarily a good thing.

Personally, I disagree with that. I believe more knowledge is always a good thing. What we choose to do with that knowledge is another question, and that's where value judgments should take place. But no one should be allowed to decide for me what information I can have.

Finally, he wraps up with:

This brief survey has mapped some of the ethical and social topography of the uncharted lands that nanotechnologies may offer to medicine, and posed many questions for debate. How, as societies, we seek answers as these technologies emerge will be of crucial importance. Scientists and clinicians in nanomedicine owe it to themselves and to the wider society to reflect on them, so that the right benefits may be achieved with justice, while retaining our humanity in all its rich diversity.

But who will decide what the "right" benefits are? These are indeed questions of crucial importance.

I'm pleased to see these issues being raised. Now is the time to debate them openly and to look for solutions that provide maximum access to information and personal choice, while preserving the classic Four Freedoms:

• Freedom of speech
• Freedom of belief
• Freedom from want
• Freedom from fear

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog