Back from Oxford

Sorry for such slow blogging over the last couple of weeks. Now that I'm done globetrotting for a while, I'll try to catch up with the backlog of what's been going on, and keep you up to date on the rest of our activities.

Last Sunday at Oxford University in England, Chris Phoenix and I had our first opportunity to do a co-presentation. In about 45 minutes, we tossed the microphone back and forth and tried to do justice to the topic of "Small Machines, Big Choices: The Looming Impacts of Molecular Manufacturing."

Apparently, we did fairly well. Or at least that seems to be the verdict of Ronald Bailey, science correspondent for Reason magazine, who attended the conference and wrote:

Next up was Michael Treder and Chris Phoenix from the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. They cannily opened with a series of quotations claiming that science will never be able to solve this or that problem. Two of my favorites were: "Pasteur's theory of germs is a ridiculous fiction" by Pierre Pachet in 1872, and "Space travel is utter bilge," by Astronomer Royal Richard Woolley in 1956. Of course, the point is that arguments that molecular manufacturing is impossible are likely to suffer the same predictive failures. Their vision of molecular manufacturing involves using trillions of very small machines to make something larger. They envision desktop nanofactories into which people feed simple raw inputs and get out nearly any product they desire. The proliferation of such nanofactories would end scarcity forever. "We can't expect to have only positive outcomes without mitigating negative outcomes," cautioned Treder.

What kind of negative outcomes? Nanofactories could produce not only hugely beneficial products such as water filters, solar cells, and houses, but also weapons of any sort. Such nanofabricated weapons would be vastly more powerful than today's. Since these weapons are so powerful, there is a strong incentive for a first strike. In addition, an age of nanotech abundance would eliminate the majority of jobs, possibly leading to massive social disruptions. Social disruption creates the opportunity for a charismatic personality to take hold. "Nanotechnology could lead to some form of world dictatorship," said Treder. "There is a global catastrophic risk that we could all be enslaved."

On the other hand, individuals with access to nanofactories could wield great destructive power. Phoenix and Treder's chief advice is more research into how to handle nanotech when it becomes a reality in the next couple of decades. In particular, Phoenix thinks that it's urgent to study whether offense or defense would be the best response. To Phoenix, offense looks a lot easier—there are a lot more ways to destroy things than to defend them. If that's true, we should narrow our future policy options.

You can read the rest of Bailey's observations on the conference here, here, and here.

Mike Treder

Comments

[Tom Craver]

Mike:

I usually try to play devil's advocate on the issue of "nanoweapon first strike". But I think you could improve your arguments about the likelihood of a first strike, if you would get more into the mind-sets of potential advocates of first strike.

Consider two mindsets - one Pre-enlightenment, and one constrained to operate under Enlightenment rules. Call them P and E:

P: Nano-spy devices will let me discover all my enemy's secrets to use against them, and locate their leaders to be killed.
E: Nano-spy devices will let us reveal the enemy's plans, and their leaders' locations so we can quickly neutralize their ability to do harm.

P: Nanoweapons will let me punish my enemies far more thoroughly!
E: Nanoweapons will cause far less collateral damage and civilian deaths, making invasion ethically tolerable.

P: With nanotechnology, I can extract all the wealth of the conquered areas! I won't even need to keep the enemy's people around as slaves.
E: With nanotechnology, we can easily make life far better for citizens of the countries we liberate.

P: If I don't obtain nanoweapons and crush my enemies now, they'll get nanoweapons, and do it to me! Even if I can't invade, nanoweapons will let me punish my enemies without getting caught.
E: If we don't use our nanoweapons soon, oppressive leaders will get them, and invading will become far more dangerous. Not to mention the near certainty that they'll use them for terrorism.

P: I can use nanoweapons and nano-spies to easily suppress rebellion here at home, despite the distraction of invading my enemies.
E: If we don't invade, oppressive leaders will get nanotech and use it to cement their oppression.

P: Attack!
E: Attack!

[Mike Treder, CRN]

Well put, Tom. Another point to consider is that the actual attack(s) may not even be required. If one MM-enabled power can convince the rest of the world that it clearly has an overwhelming and undeniable advantage, and that therefore they all must submit to its promise of benign but global authority, it could be game-set-match without a nano-shot fired.

[John B]

I would strongly suspect that there will be those who do not believe such statements (or even the theoretical capabilities!) without proof. As such, there will likely be 'messy' proof or proofs made in verification of such capabilities.

Unfortunately.

-John