Responsible Nanotechnology

Diamond Mechanosynthesis

Theoretical Analysis of Diamond Mechanosynthesis:
Positional C2 Deposition on Diamond C(110) Surface Using Si/Ge/Sn-Based Dimer Placement Tools

An important new research paper on the simulation of tooltip designs for molecular manufacturing is now available online. One of the lead authors, Robert A. Freitas Jr., tells us:

The paper was published in February 2006 in the peer-reviewed Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience. It reports that the most-studied mechanosynthesis tooltip motif (DCB6Ge) successfully places a C2 carbon dimer on a C(110) diamond surface at both 300K (room temperature) and 80K (liquid nitrogen temperature), and that the silicon variant (DCB6Si) also works at 80K but not at 300K. Maximum acceptable limits for tooltip translational and rotational misplacement errors are reported in the paper. Over 100,000 CPU hours were invested in this study. The DCB6 tooltip motif, initially described at a Foresight Conference in 2002, was the first complete tooltip ever proposed for diamond mechanosynthesis and remains the only tooltip motif that has been successfully simulated for its intended function on a full 200-atom diamond surface.

Through these detailed computer simulations, we are learning a great deal about the performance properties of different tips at different temperatures. Basically, this says that the germanium (DBC6Ge) tooltip should work reliably at room temperature. Also, it appears that there is no problem placing dimers with a one dimer gap, although placing them directly adjacent can cause some defect formation.

(Thanks to Brian Wang and Chris Phoenix for technical intepretation.)

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Nanotech Talk: New Zealand

The Institution of Professional Engineers New Zealand (IPENZ) has graciously invited me to visit their beautiful country for a speaking tour of nine cities over two weeks, from September 4-14, 2006. So, for all of our "Kiwi" readers, here is the tentative itinerary:

• Dunedin
  
• Timaru
  
• Christchurch
  
• Nelson
  
• Wellington
  
• New Plymouth
  
• Wanganui
  
• Palmerston North
  
• Auckland

I'll have more information on dates, times, and venues as details are confirmed. If you're a New Zealander who is interested in the relationship between science and society—especially, of course, in the transformative potential of nanotechnology—I look forward to meeting you in September!

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Wow - Prix Ars Electronica!

I'm very pleased to report that this blog has been nominated for Prix Ars Electronica, the annual "International Competition for CyberArts."

Since 1987, the Prix Ars Electronica has served as an interdisciplinary platform for everyone who uses the computer as a universal medium for implementing and designing their creative projects at the interface of art, technology and society. The competition is organized by the Ars Electronica Center and ORF’s Upper Austria Regional Studio, and the prizes are awarded during the Ars Electronica Festival each year. The Prix Ars Electronica is one of the most important awards for creativity and pioneering spirit in the field of digital media.

We will be competing in the "Digital Communities" category, which covers:

Political, social, and cultural projects, initiatives, groups, and scenes from all over the world utilizing digital technology to better society and assume social responsibility.

Just to be nominated is quite an honor, and it is both gratifying and humbling. Next week, juries made up of "experts from around the world" will convene in Linz, Austria, to evaluate the entries and select the winners.

Wish us luck!

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

CRN Global Task Force Update

The mandate of the CRN Global 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 last August with a few core people, including Jerry Glenn (Director of the AC/UNU Millennium Project), Nick Bostrom (Director, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University), David Brin (author of The Transparent Society), Robert A. Freitas Jr. (author of Nanomedicine), and Ray Kurzweil (CEO of Kurzweil Technologies).

Since then, the CRN Task Force (CTF) has grown to more than 60 people from 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. 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 early work of the CRN Task Force has underscored the conviction of CRN that there are no simple answers or simple solutions.

For their initial project, the CTF chose to generate a range of independent essays identifying and defining specific concerns. Last month, the first 11 essays were published in the Nanotechnology Perceptions academic journal and were posted online at the Wise-Nano.org web site and at KurzweilAI.net. In the second week of May, we'll have a second group of 11 essays published in the same places. More on that as we get closer...

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

The Human Future: Two Views

What is this?

A brain scan? An X-ray of a cauliflower?

Nope, it's an alluvial river delta. But I also see it as an illuminating analogy for the future of humans and our post-human descendants.

During my recent visit to the Foundation For the Future, I was interviewed on-camera for a documentary film they are making. When asked to describe my vision of the next thousand years (!) of humanity, I thought of the alluvial delta.

These images look a bit like a family tree, which, obviously, is the point.

Yesterday I was asked to make a two-hour presentation at New York University on the future of the human race, especially in relation to our science and technology. I proposed this river delta concept as one vision for the development of humans during this millennium. It wouldn't surprise me at all if by the end of a thousand years (or much sooner) we and our descendants have divided into a thousand different streams, some far different from what we think of today as a "natural" human.

However, that was not the only possible future that I described to the students at NYU. The other picture that I presented was this one:

Unless we make very wise decisions about handling the unprecedented power of molecular manufacturing and other emerging technologies, we may not, as a species, survive long enough to have our river of life branch out into a fertile delta.

Many of the crucial challenges before us are examined in the essays below. How will we respond?

• Nanotechnology Dangers and Defenses
  
• Molecular Manufacturing: Too Dangerous to Allow?
  
• Nano-Guns, Nano-Germs, and Nano-Steel
  
• The Need For Limits
  
• Singularities and Nightmares: The Range of Our Futures

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Problèmes éthiques des nanotechnologies

Arturus, writer of a French language blog, Informience, has a long review of the nanotech essays recently produced by members of CRN's Global Task Force.

Le CRN (Center for a Responsible Nanotechnology) publie une série d’essais relatifs au développement des nanotechnologies et aux problèmes éthiques qui en découlent. Publiés dans le journal Nanotechnology Perceptions, et disponibles sur le web, ces textes émanent de spécialistes du sujet.

We're pleased to see that lecteurs de Français will have the opportunity to learn a bit about the ethical issues of nanotechnology.

UPDATE: Today on InternetActu, another French language blog, Jean-Marc Manach also posted a nice entry about the essays produced by the CRN Task Force. It appears that Paris is paying attention!

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Total Flake, or Genius?

Hugo de Garis is an associate professor of computer science and adjunct professor of theoretical physics at Utah State University (USA), where he teaches the world's first PhD course on "artificial brain building." Professor de Garis also is a political visionary, predicting a "gigadeath" war over the issue of "species dominance" as godlike massively intelligent machines that he calls "artilects" threaten human survival.

A Utah newspaper article has more:

De Garis's 2005 book The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines reads a lot like the premise for a sci-fi summer blockbuster. But de Garis isn't just musing.

"I will try to persuade you that it is not science fiction, and that strong reasons exist to compel humanity to believe," he says in the introduction to The Artilect War. . .

De Garis predicts that in about 20 years nanotechnology will have developed to the point that "nanots" (nanoscale robots) and other nanoscale tools will be used to help scientists learn more about the human brain.

"I expect an explosion of new knowledge," de Garis says. "Neuroscience will just blossom."

In his warnings about global wars made horrific by emerging technologies, de Garis has a message that is not unlike CRN's. The main difference is that he sees the danger arising primarily from a combination of advanced robotics and strong AI (enabled by nanotech), whereas we are equally concerned that devastating wars could occur before the development of "artilects." Several of the recent essays produced by the CRN Global Task Force raise the issue of advanced weaponry built by molecular manufacturing and the probable -- possibly disastrous -- destabilizing effect on geopolitics.

De Garis is willing to admit that everything could play out in a variety of scenarios, though he doesn't see it ending pleasantly. "I don't see an easy way out of (the Artilect War)," he says. "And I’ve been thinking and thinking."

We think it's a good idea to listen carefully to de Garis. Of course, not everyone agrees.

A publisher told him his ideas were "fantastical," making his book a hard sell. An applied ethics professor at Princeton even said in an email to de Garis, "To be blunt, I am not sure how to place you between the 'total flake' and 'genius ahead of his time' views of your ideas."

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Nanotechnology & Armies

In the brief but crucial period of transition from pre-MM to post-MM, what role should be played by the world's militaries?

Because there are so many dimensions of development and so many unknowns, we can't yet offer a prescriptive answer to that question. But I'll submit that David Brin (a member of CRN's Global Task Force) has provided a vitally important perspective from which to consider this issue.

According to "Three Systems of Action" -- a bedrock document for CRN's positions -- military and political institutions both fall under the Guardian tradition; they act from similar motivations and with common sets of ethics. But this does not suggest that they must or should be inseparable.

Brin makes an excellent point when he says:

Few civilians can appreciate how difficult this step [calling for US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign] has been for military men who spent their professional lives steeped in a tradition of stoical, apolitical silence and submission to civilian authority. Reluctance to interfere in the nation’s political affairs. That tradition, virtually unprecedented in the history of armies and nations, should be revered and respected. It OUGHT to be hard for officers to do what these generals have done.

Considering the enormous power that molecular manufacturing will make available to armies, dictators, citizens, and rogues, it is vital that men and women of courage and principle occupy positions of authority in that transitional period of the near future.

There is much we can learn and should apply from the serious drama being played out today.

Brin again:

What all of this ultimately amounts to is a golden opportunity to change all of the dynamics that have made the first few years of the 21st Century such bad news for America and Western Civilization. The men and women [of the professional Officer Corps] who have worked the hardest and trained the longest to protect that civilization are holding out their hands to us now -- not just to liberals and democrats, but to all moderate, pragmatic, calm and decent citizens who want common sense to prevail yet again.

If common sense and high ideals are not allowed to prevail in the transformation of global society from pre-MM to post-MM, the outcome may be worse than any apocalyptic nightmare ever conceived.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Crude Tools are a Problem

Researchers have installed a molecular engine into a "car" just a few billionths of a metre long. Measuring just 3 by 4 nanometres, around 20,000 of the cars could be parked on the tip of a human hair.

Jim Tour and his colleagues at Rice University (USA) have done it again.

The nano-car's molecular motor contains a pair of bonded carbon molecules that rotate in one direction if illuminated by a specific wavelength of light. After fixing the molecular engine to the car's chassis and shining a light on it, Tour's team confirmed that the engine was running by using nuclear magnetic resonance to monitor the position of the hydrogen atoms within it.

But the car was not released to drive itself along. "It's analogous to building a race car and putting it up on blocks," Tour said. "Now it's a question of getting it out on the track."

However --

The previous version of the nano-car moved along a flat gold surface. But this would stop the new motor from working as the energy collected from light would drain into the gold molecules.

A non-metal track should allow the engine to work, but this makes observing the car in action problematic as the scanning tunnelling microscope normally used needs a metal base. Other forms of microscopy either do not have the power to resolve the car properly, Tour says, or require the use of other surfaces that are unsuitable.

"This shows a general problem with nanotechnology right now," Tour says. "We only have crude tools and that slows development down."

Yep. As Richard Feynman said, "The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom. It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not been done because we are too big."

We're getting closer, but we're still too big.

Although we have a relatively long way to go, our crude tools have improved quite a bit since Feynman spoke those words in 1959. New developments every day are moving us closer to the ability to build high-performance products with atomic precision.

Today, nanotechnology is at a state similar to the airplane in 1900, or the computer in 1950. But progress is moving quickly, and when molecular manufacturing is achieved, it will have the impact of all the technology in the 20th century, shrunk down into just a few years. Get ready!

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Evolution? Or Revolution?

In an online news story, James Murday, from the Nanoscale Science Engineering and Technology Subcommittee of the US National Science and Technology Council, says:

Nanoscience is going to impact both commercial and military uses. From a security and defense perspective, the United States prides itself and wants to be ahead of the technology.

He adds:

It is an evolutionary technology. . . It is not likely it will open up a revolutionary new weapons system, but it is important that we pay attention to the implications so the United States doesn't become blindsighted.

We'd say he is twice right and once wrong. Nanoscience and nanotechnology will indeed have both commercial and military impacts; that's why nanotech is referred to as dual-use. Murday is also right about the risk of being blindsided if the implications are ignored.

Where he is wrong is in doubting that nanotechnology "will open up a revolutionary new weapons system." It will.

For the first two or three generations, nanoscale technologies will progress at an evolutionary pace, bringing significant but incremental advances. But with the advent of molecular manufacturing (in what is considered the fourth generation of nanotechnology), the smooth upward slope of technical development will result in a sudden acceleration of impacts leading to revolutionary and disruptive change.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog