Responsible Nanotechnology

The Global Warning

Get a group of scientists together to discuss issues of worldwide consequence, and one topic -- human-caused climate change -- is likely to emerge as the most prominent.

Last week, I participated in a symposium on "Nanotechnology Governance: Environmental Management from a Global Perspective" at Vanderbilt University. Between speakers, a common point of discussion was the dire need for solutions to counteract global warming; a common conclusion was that the only technology that may offer more than stopgap measures is advanced generation nanotechnology -- especially molecular manufacturing.

Meanwhile, the bad news continues to pile up:

• Melting of Floating Ice Will Raise Sea Level
• Open Water in Summer Key to Declining Arctic Ice
• Snows Of Kilimanjaro Disappearing, Glacial Ice Loss Increasing

An Inconvenient Truth is the name of a new documentary film opening this week. Here is what Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig says about it:

On Wednesday, May 24, in select theaters in New York and LA, a film by Davis Guggenheim about Al Gore’s global warming slide-show will open. I have seen the slide-show. It is — by far — the most extraordinary lecture I have ever seen anyone give about anything. And I’ve now seen the film, An Inconvenient Truth, twice.

I will rarely ask favors of those who read here. But this is one. No issue is as important. I doubt you will ever see an argument as compelling. And though this is a beautiful and passionate film, it is, in the end, an argument that gets built upon the ethic that guides at least some conversation in places like this — facts, reason and a bit of persuasion.

I've already reserved my ticket for opening night. I'll be interested to see whether nanotechnology is identified as an important component of a meaningful solution to this enormous problem.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Molecular Manufacturing vs. Nanoscale

We've said it before, but it's worth reviewing: Why molecular manufacturing will be so much more powerful than nanoscale technologies.

Nanoscale technologies are not typically general-purpose. They may make a medicine, or a material, or a small structure with a specific purpose. But if you want to do a different thing, you have to invent a different technology, or combine several nanoscale technologies using some other process. Molecular manufacturing will be able to make complete products using a huge range of programmable shapes with a wide variety of mechanical properties and functions.

Nanoscale technologies are not typically as high performance as scaling laws would suggest. There are several reasons for this, including: fluid drag and floppy-molecule relaxation time in biopolymer technologies; difficulties integrating nanoscale devices into large high-performance systems; imprecise manufacturing techniques; and other limits on manufacturing, such as the planar nature of lithography.

Nanoscale technologies can't deliver huge amounts of information to the nanoscale, which limits the total flexibility and functionality of the manufacturing process. To handle huge amounts of information requires a processing system, and there are no nanoscale processing systems integrated with nanoscale manufacturing systems yet. Molecular manufacturing would be able to build such systems, which could incorporate gigabytes or terabytes of blueprint information into every product at no extra charge. The large machines used by nanoscale technologies (whether scanning probe microscopes or test tubes) also face scaling-law disadvantages that limit throughput.

When all these disadvantages are added together, it becomes clear that, however impressive the results achieved by nanoscale technologies, molecular manufacturing will be far more capable -- at least in its domain of engineered nanoscale machinery integrated into large intricate products.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Robot Factory Predictions

Thirty years ago, a robotics and AI researcher named James Albus published a book called People's Capitalism. Most of the book, as the title suggests, is about economic reform. I won't comment on the economic ideas in the book. But Chapter 5 is very relevant to molecular manufacturing predictions.

Chapter 5 explains the technical advances that both require and allow (according to the author) the new economic structure he proposes. It seems that fully automated factories were about to be developed, using computer-controlled robots to do manufacturing operations.

When automatic factories be­gin to manufacture automatic factories, cost reductions will propagate exponentially from generation to generation. The introduction of computers into the manufacturing process thus has the potential for increasing productivity on a scale never before conceivable. Eventually the cost of finished manufactured goods may fall to only slightly above the cost of unprocessed raw materials.

Albus projected some of the possible consequences. His writing on this point sounds a lot like CRN's:

Robot technology, like computer technology, has military as well as economic implications. Any country that develops the capacity to run its factories around the clock seven days per week with only a few human workers will have a tremen­dous advantage both economically and militarily. If nothing else, this capability would allow military weapons to be pro­duced in virtually unlimited quantities at extremely low costs. But, even assuming that such plants were never used for mili­tary production, the country that possessed such a large sur­plus of efficient production facilities could easily dominate the world economically simply by selling manufacturing capacity at rates far below what countries using less efficient methods could hope to match. .... Whether this event results in unprecedented benefits or economic chaos depends largely on whether we can devise satisfactory answers to the questions: “Who owns these machines? Who controls them, and who gets the wealth they create?”

So what happened? Why didn't automated factories change the world? Why aren't factories fully automated, even now? And why do we expect that general-purpose nanofactories will be easier to develop?

Several factors make nanofactories different from large-scale robot factories. But first, note that automation in factories has in fact brought down the cost of goods quite substantially. If not for the fact that advances in transportation have allowed robots to be outcompeted by inexpensive labor overseas, we would probably be seeing even more robot use.

A large factory is limited in its speed; large machines can only work so fast. If the first automated factory-building factory costs a billion dollars, and it can build a new factory in as little as a year, then it will take ten years before 1,000 factories exist, and each factory will still have a million dollars in amortized capital cost--plus the substantial cost of raw materials. Meanwhile, advances in manufacturing technology will require continual redesign to avoid obsolescence.

Today's machines require a wide array of materials, formed by an even broader array of processes. I'd guess that at least a million different operations, from chemical purification to injection molding to grinding to measuring, are involved in making a large modern factory. Each of those operations would have to be researched and developed in order to automate it. It's no surprise that progress has been incremental.

By contrast, a molecular manufacturing system will use extremely small machines that can work very fast. Basic scaling laws, as well as comparisons with biology and preliminary engineering studies, indicate that a nanofactory should be able to manufacture its own mass in something like an hour. Within a month, the cost of developing a nanofactory could be amortized over not thousands, but billions of factories; furthermore, nanofactory manufacturing capacity would not be scarce. That changes the economics of production more fundamentally than a mere order of magnitude decrease in cost over several years.

The high performance of nanoscale machines (again, due to scaling laws) implies that there will be more demand for nanofactory-built products. It also implies that machines can be over-engineered, making designs less dependent on exact material choices and reducing the number of different materials needed.

Reduction in materials needed implies a reduction in the number of processes needed to make those materials. From the other direction, the discrete and uniform nature of atoms makes control much easier; two parts built by identical operation sequences will be perfectly identical (except for transient variations from thermal noise, and very rare manufacturing errors that will be detectable with limited sensing). The discrete nature of atoms and their bonds also means that properly-designed parts will not wear or require lubrication. All these factors simplify the design task.

It has been speculated that a minimal engineered bacterium might require less than 200 genes. This is for a system that not only manufactures, but metabolizes and self-repairs. It is likely impossible to build a macro-scale hands-free manufacturing system with 200, or even 2000 parts. But there are fewer than 200 atoms in the Periodic Table, and a molecular manufacturing system will be able to take advantage of that fact.

Design of a nanofactory would be extremely difficult today; it might cost on the order of a billion dollars. However, improvements in computers will make it far easier, quite rapidly. I can simulate reactions and components on my laptop today that would have required a small supercomputer a decade ago. Advances in general knowledge of chemistry will continue to improve the models. Rapidly improving tools, driven by other industries, will also make the job easier.

Today, it would be possible to build a fully robotic factory, but it would not be economically rewarding. In just a few years, it will be possible to build a nanofactory--and it will be very rewarding. Someone will do it.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Simulating the Future

Molecular manufacturing (MM) will provide spectacular opportunities for humanity’s gain -- and also will pose grave threats. Benefits range from clean energy, clean water, and vastly more productive agriculture, to greatly improved human health and longevity, seamless universal access to high-bandwidth computing, low-cost access to space, and more. But in order to realize all these gains, plans first must be made to contain the dangers.

Molecular manufacturing still is not “on the radar” of many organizations, including businesses, governments, and national militaries. The effects of MM could be extreme, resulting from a sudden dramatic increase in manufacturing capacity, product performance, and ease of new product design. Implications may include severe economic disruption, social chaos, oppressive restrictions, black market trafficking, ubiquitous surveillance, and an accelerated, unstable arms race.

It appears likely that MM will arrive sooner than most organizations expect. Reactions to this may be varied, and perhaps panicked. In order to understand how the effects of MM will play out, CRN would like to know how a variety of organizations might react if they are taken by surprise.

One method for gaining this knowledge is to conduct an old-fashioned survey. In fact, we are currently designing a project to do just that. But another method -- a 21st century approach -- would be to conduct a high-level computer simulation. And that leads us to this fascinating report:

If computers could create a society, what kind of world would they make? Thanks to the work of an ambitious project that adds a whole new meaning to the phrase, ‘computer society’, in which millions of software agents will potentially evolve their own culture, we could be about to find out.

With funding from the European Commission’s Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) initiative of the IST programme, five European research institutes are collaborating on the NEW TIES project to create a thoroughly 21st-century brave new world – one populated by randomly generated software beings, capable of developing their own language and culture.

This kind of social interaction is a tantalising prospect for the artificial intelligence (AI) experts, computer scientists, sociologists and linguists working on NEW TIES. The keyword here is ‘social.’ “While individual (or machine) learning and evolutionary behaviour have been quite well studied, social learning is still an unknown quantity,” says project coordinator Gusz Eiben, an AI professor at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam.

“No one has ever created an engine of this complexity,” says Eiben, adding that it will support about 1,000 agents at first, building up to millions – each one a unique entity with its own characteristics, including gender, life expectancy, fertility, size, and metabolism. The agents will not be labelled, but will have their own distinguishing characteristics to make them recognisable. Their traits will be inherited from their parents, and passed on to their offspring, but they will be able to learn from their own experiences and from each other.

“It’s a given of the NEW TIES project that we are not hardwiring agents,” says Eiben. “We are not programming how they behave. Each entity has its own ‘controller,’ analogous to a brain. And because we want to create an interesting controller, we have to produce a challenging world – otherwise there would be no impetus for development. So, in one scenario, we have created a world with seasons – so that the agents have to learn to find, transport and store food. And there are two rival groups, so they will have to learn to tell friend from foe.”

As computer processing power continues to grow exponentially, simulations of much greater complexity and far finer detail will become possible. It's not yet clear how soon we'll be able to use this method to answer difficult questions and design practical solutions, but it certainly bears watching.

And, who knows? As David Brin suggests in this story, there may be some surprises in store as we use simulations to discover the future.

Or, as Nick Bostrom wonders, who's simming who?

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

All of a Sudden -- BOOM!!

Will a computer ever be as smart as a human? By many measures, computers already are many times smarter than us. And yet, a five year-old child can learn to tie his shoes in a few short lessons, while a robot? Still waiting.

Perhaps it's the wrong question. "As smart as" implies similar to, and the intelligence that computers, robots, and androids acquire may be quite different from ours.

On ZDNet, a recent story with the arresting title, "This is your brain on a microchip," says:

Despite the false starts, many high-profile neuroscientists and bioengineers gathered this week at IBM to talk about how and why cognitive computing research is finally bearing fruit. Scientists from around the world talked about projects ranging from digitally mapping the human brain to developing microcircuits that can repair brain damage.

James Albus, a senior fellow and founder of the Intelligent Systems Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, made the most convincing case for why the era of "engineering the mind" is here. "We are at a tipping point...analogous to where nuclear physics was in 1905. The technology is emerging to conduct definitive experiments. The neurosciences have developed a good idea of computation and representation of the brain."

At the Singularity Summit a few days ago, both Ray Kurzweil and Eliezer Yudkowsky made the point that progress measured by exponential advances may actually seem very slow for a long time. The early years of the graph will show a nearly flat line, and then all of a sudden -- boom!

Note that in terms of results (the vertical), halfway to the goal is not achieved until more than 90% of the time and effort (the horizontal) have been expended. Many real world examples of this have been offered; you can probably think of your own.

Kurzweil and Yudkowsky -- and perhaps the cognitive scientists quoted in the article above -- might say that progress toward truly thinking machines is getting close to the exponential take-off point. Similarly, we at CRN have warned that almost all of the most remarkable results that will lead to a molecular manufacturing breakthrough will occur within the final one or two percent of all the time spent on the problem. And what that means is that we may not have much warning.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Top Universities for Nanotech

Nanodot has a pointer to the latest Small Times survey of US universities that offer nanotech or microtech programs. In that same post, Christine Peterson offers some good advice for students.

UPDATE: Several eager students have asked us, in the comment section below, for advice on which universities to attend or which courses to take. Unfortunately, that is not a service that CRN can provide. We appreciate your interest, and we will offer general information from time to time in this blog, but we are not equipped to give individual student guidance.

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

The Most Dangerous Day

For most children in the developing world, the most dangerous day of their lives is their birthday.

Of more than ten million children under the age of five who die each year, about one in five -- an estimated two million babies -- die within the first 24 hours of life, and another two million die during their first month of life.

Simple measures like knit caps to keep babies warm could help save many of those lives, according to the report released by the US-based group, Save the Children.

Knit caps. Yes, that's a simple measure indeed.

Could advanced nanotechnology make a difference in saving the lives of these babies? Of course it could, but that's not really the point here. The fact is that we already have the technology we need to prevent almost all of these senseless deaths of innocent babies. What we don't have is the WILL.

And if we don't have the will today to stop millions of unnecessary deaths, then why should we expect to have the will in the future to ensure responsible use of nanotechnology?

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog

Singularity Summit Summary

Based on audience response to the ideas presented at today's Singularity Summit, here are some general observations:

1. Humans are, by nature, conservative. In an auditorium filled with people attending an event focused on techno-change -- and in a university set in the middle of Silicon Valley, no less -- still the largest applause was reserved for those with the most reactionary views.

2. We fear change. That's normal and even healthy. In fact, it's a survival mechanism, hard-wired in through thousands of generations of natural selection. When taken to excess, obviously, it can be paralyzing. Moreover, those who challenge the human tendency toward caution are those who most often make the greatest discoveries (or die trying).

3. Progress -- technological and social -- continues to occur and eventually is accepted by nearly everyone. I call this phenomenon "Unconscious Confirmation." It's like the wonderful quote from John Lennon, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Seemingly unacceptable change is what happens while we're busy doing other things.

4. Truly disruptive global change on a rapid timescale is something we have never experienced. We are thus unprepared for it, and it could even be argued that we are incapable of adequately preparing. I hope that's not true.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog

Singularity Summit LIVE! (5)

2:50 PM

Bill McKibben, author of Enough, is speaking from a remote location via teleportation, so to speak. His image is projected on a small screen behind the other speakers. It's life-size, which is supposed to make it seem as if he's here, I guess, but the problem is that it's hard for many of us to see the image. He's also not using a slide show, so basically we're just listening to a disembodied voice. To make matters worse, he is reading his talk, which tends to be harder to take in than is extemporaneous speaking.

Bill's remarks are focused on his objection to "the immortalitists." He says that instead of aiming to live forever, we should aim to live. That's a remarkably shallow platitude, in my view, as I see nothing wrong with vigorously pursuing both aims.

Now he is reporting on how humans, as a whole, are less happy today than we were 50 years ago. He claims that the answer of technoprogressives is always "more is better." But I think that's: a) a strawman, and b) confusing cause with correlation.

It's a strawman because virtually all of the futurist thinkers that I know (and I know most of the leading ones) are just as interested in living now as they are in living forever, and they are just as connected with human interests and values as they are to technological goodies.

The confusion between cause and correlation comes from the suggestion that people as a whole are less happy today because of advanced technology. There seems to be no real evidence for this.

3:15 PM

OK, McKibben is done, and now Ray Kurzweil is back at the podium to give his thoughts on and reponses to all the earlier speakers. I'm not going to try to keep up. He's covering a lot of points in a short time. Happily, you can look forward to a Singularity Summit podcast, which is supposed to be coming in a few days, and then a streaming video some time after that.

3:42 PM

The final segment of today's event is a panel discussion including all of the speakers (except Eric Drexler, who is no longer here) and an audience Q&A. The panel is being moderated by Steve Jurvetson and Peter Thiel.

Steve began by asking the panel: Could "uploading" a human mind be expected "to work" if it was attempted before we have a thorough understanding of how the brain works?

Ray's answer was a little hard to understand, but I think he said, first, that uploading is not really necessary for the technological singularity to occur, and second, a premature upload probably wouldn't be successful. But he emphasized that uploading is "a side issue."

Eliezer talked about the slow rate of change provided by evolution versus the rapid rate possible though design and development.

A note here about the problem with a huge panel (10 speakers) at the end of a long day: it tends to be unfocused and not very satisfying. I prefer to allow audience Q&A and/or speaker discussion periodically throughout an event and not saved up until the end.

Peter Thiel asked: By what year will we have strong AI, and what is the probability that it will lead to a better world?

Ray says ~2029, and 90%. Wow, that's high!

Doug Hofstadter says human-level computer intelligence by ~2100, and who knows?

Nick says maybe 2040, and perhaps 50%.

Sebastian says 2101, and good in hindsight [laughter].

Max says it all depends on what we do.

John says around 2060, but it could be much sooner if our burgeoning computer networks -- mainly spurred by Google -- awaken spontaneously.

Audience question: Will strong AI emerge or be designed?

Eliezer says the question is too simple and anyway we don't know enough yet to provide a meaningful answer.

Ray says it's too complex to emerge spontaneously and probably will be designed.

Tyler Emerson asked Bill McKibben: How can we avoid existential risks?

He said, slow down. Say enough is enough. Relinquish some technologies. He added thet he thinks the two most important inventions of the last few centuries are the concept of a protected wilderness, and the concept of nonviolent resistance [applause, including from me].

In response to another audience question, Cory referred to the technological singularity as "the Rapture of the Nerds" (crediting Ken MacLeod), and got loud applause.

Somehow while I wasn't paying attention, the discussion turned to whether we will eventually have a world government. The consensus seemed to be Yes, although as to whether or not that will be a good thing, there was less agreement.

More discussion ensued on various topics until, finally, the event concluded at 5:35 PM. Whew, it was a long day!

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog

Singularity Blogging Elsewhere

For someone else's view of what's happening here at the summit, check out Renee Blodgett's "Down the Avenue" live bloggingness.

Another outstanding source of Singularity Summit reporting is Dan Farber's blog at ZDNet.

Mike Treder

Tags: nanotechnology nanotech nano science technology ethics weblog blog