Bill Joy: nanobots

The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology
by Ray Kurzweil
Published 14 Jul 2005

A nanotechnology immune system would work similarly both in the human body and in the environment and would include nanobot sentinels that could detect rogue self-replicating nanobots. When a threat was detected, defensive nanobots capable of destroying the intruders would rapidly be created (eventually with self-replication) to provide an effective defensive force. Bill Joy and other observers have pointed out that such an immune system would itself be a danger because of the potential of "autoimmune" reactions (that is, the immune-system nanobots attacking the world they are supposed to defend).42 However this possibility is not a compelling reason to avoid the creation of an immune system.

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There have been discussions and proposals to guide AI development toward what Eliezer Yudkowsky calls "friendly AI"30 (see the section "Protection from 'Unfriendly' Strong AI," p. 420). These are useful for discussion, but it is infeasible today to devise strategies that will absolutely ensure that future AI embodies human ethics and values. Returning to the Past? In his essay and presentations Bill Joy eloquently describes the plagues of centuries past and how new self-replicating technologies, such as mutant bioengineered pathogens and nanobots run amok, may bring back long-forgotten pestilence. Joy acknowledges that technological advances, such as antibiotics and improved sanitation, have freed us from the prevalence of such plagues, and such constructive applications, therefore, need to continue.

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·Nanotechnology will enable the design of nanobots: robots designed at the molecular level, measured in microns (millionths of a meter), such as "respirocytes" (mechanical red-blood cells).33 Nanobots will have myriad roles within the human body, including reversing human aging (to the extent that this task will not already have been completed through biotechnology, such as genetic engineering). ·Nanobots will interact with biological neurons to vastly extend human experience by creating virtual reality from within the nervous system. ·Billions of nanobots in the capillaries of the brain will also vastly extend human intelligence.

The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI
by Ray Kurzweil
Published 25 Jun 2024

The best available estimates say that the human body is made of several tens of trillions of biological cells.[104] If we augment ourselves with just one nanobot per one hundred cells, this would amount to several hundred billion nanobots. It remains to be seen, though, what ratio is optimal. It might turn out, for example, that advanced nanobots could be effective even at a cell-to-nanobot ratio several orders of magnitude greater. One of the main effects of aging is degrading organ performance, so a key role of these nanobots will be to repair and augment them. Other than expanding our neocortex, as discussed in chapter 2, this will mainly involve helping our nonsensory organs to efficiently place substances into the blood supply (or lymph system) or remove them.[105] For example, the lungs put in oxygen and take out carbon dioxide.[106] The liver and kidneys take out toxins.[107] The entire digestive tract puts nutrients into our blood supply.[108] Various organs such as the pancreas produce hormones that control metabolism.[109] Changes in hormone levels can result in diseases like diabetes.

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The available biomass has on the order of 1040 carbon atoms.[45] The carbon atoms within a single replicating nanobot might be on the order of 107.[46] The nanobot therefore would need to create 1033 copies of itself—not all directly, I should stress, but via iterated replication. The nanobots in each “generation” might just create two copies of themselves, or another small number. The astoundingly large numbers come from this process being repeated again and again with the copies and the copies of the copies. So that’s about 110 generations of the nanobots (since 2110 = 1033), or 109 if the nanobots in previous generations stay active.[47] Nanotechnology expert Robert Freitas estimates a replication time of about one hundred seconds, so under ideal conditions the gray goo wipeout time for that much carbon would be around three hours.[48] However, the actual rate of destruction would be much slower, because the world’s biomass is not laid out in a continuous block.

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If the self-replication process gets out of control, or in the event of a bug or security breach, the source of the replication instructions could be immediately shut down, preventing any further nanobot activity.[64] As will be discussed further in chapter 7, the worst-case scenario for nanotechnology would be so-called gray goo—self-replicating nanobots that form an uncontrollable chain reaction.[65] In theory, this could consume most of the biomass of the earth and turn it into more nanobots. But the “broadcast” architecture advocated by Ralph Merkle is a strong defense against this. If the instructions must all come from a central source, shutting off the broadcast in an emergency would render the nanobots inactive and physically unable to continue self-replicating.

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
by Michio Kaku
Published 15 Mar 2011

By late in this century, when the techniques of self-assembly are finally mastered, we can think about commercial applications of replicators. GRAY GOO? Some people, including Bill Joy, a founder of Sun Microsystems, have expressed reservations about nanotechnology, writing that it’s only a matter of time before the technology runs wild, devours all the minerals of the earth, and spits out useless “gray goo” instead. Even Prince Charles of England has spoken out against nanotechnology and the gray-goo scenario. The danger lies in the key property of these nanobots: they can reproduce themselves. Like a virus, they cannot be recalled once they are let loose into the environment.

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But one way to overcome this problem is to create a nanobot, a still- hypothetical molecular robot. These nanobots have several key properties. First, they can reproduce themselves. If they can reproduce once, then they can, in principle, create an unlimited number of copies of themselves. So the trick is to create just the first nanobot. Second, they are capable of identifying molecules and cutting them up at precise points. Third, by following a master code, they are capable of reassembling these atoms into different arrangements. So the task of rearranging 1026 atoms is reduced to making a similar number of nanobots, each one designed to manipulate individual atoms.

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As the decades pass, there will be plenty of time to design safeguards against nanobots that run amok. For example, one can design a fail-safe system so that, by pressing a panic button, all the nanobots are rendered useless. Or one could design “killer bots,” specifically designed to seek out and destroy nanobots that have run out of control. Another way to deal with this is to study Mother Nature, who has had billions of years of experience with this problem. Our world is full of self-replicating molecular life-forms, called viruses and bacteria, that can proliferate out of control and mutate as well. However, our body has also created “nanobots” of its own, antibodies and white blood cells in our immune system that seek out and destroy alien life-forms.

Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization
by K. Eric Drexler
Published 6 May 2013

Meanwhile, the leaders pushing for the proposal gave every sign of believing that APM-level fabrication technologies meant nanobugs, false promises, and nonsensical threats, and they seemed to think that these ideas were all of a piece and nothing more than a pernicious error. My name had already been tarred by the mythology, and now Bill Joy had inadvertently set me up for attack. Public documents offer a glimpse of the state of mind in the leadership’s inner circle. In a report from a September workshop, their de facto scientific spokesman, Richard Smalley,* indicated what they saw as the threat: The principal fear is that it may be possible to create a new life form, a self-replicating nanoscale robot, a “nanobot”. . . . These nanobots are both enabling fantasy and dark nightmare in the popularized conception of nanotechnology. . . .

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Ironically, the popular idea that APM would require impossible atom juggling became a popular criticism among scientists who seemingly neither read the literature nor considered how APM might actually be accomplished. 204a glossy “brochure for the public,” entitled: Nanotechnology: Shaping the World Atom by Atom, Interagency Working Group on Nanoscience, Engineering and Technology (December 1999) (http://www.wtec.org/loyola/nano/IWGN.Public.Brochure/). 204and the NSTC issued a more formal document: National Nanotechnology Initiative: The Initiative and Its Implementation Plan, National Science and Technology Council Committee on Technology Subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology (July 2000) (http://nano.gov/sites/default/files/pub_resource/nni_implementation_plan_2000.pdf). 205In the section titled “Definitions”: Sec. 8., Definitions, 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, 107th Congress, 2001–2002 (the same definition appears in a series of subsequent bills). 205fna bill was introduced that would strike: Sec. 13., Amendments to Definitions, National Nanotechnology Initiative Amendments Act of 2008, 110th Congress, 2007–2009. 206the 2004 National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategic Plan: National Science and Technology Council Committee on Technology Subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology (December 2004) (www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/nano/reports/sp_report_nset_final.pdf). 207published an article on future technologies in Wired magazine: Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Issue 8.04 (April 2000): 238–262. 208The principal fear is that it may be possible to create: R. E. Smalley, “Nanotechnology, Education, and the Fear of Nanobots,” in Societal Implications of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, a report from a National Science Foundation workshop on September 28–29, 2000 (www.wtec.org/nanoreports/nanosi.pdf). Here and in Scientific American, Smalley repeated, elaborated, and reinforced misconceptions that came out of popular fiction. 208equated APM . . . with swarms of dangerous nanobots: R. E. Smalley, “Of Chemistry, Love and Nanobots,” Scientific American 285, no. 3 (September 2001): 76–77 (cohesion.rice.edu/naturalsciences/smalley/emplibrary/sa285-76.pdf).

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In other words, the clamor was all about nanorobotic bugs, funding, fear, and politics, far from anything reality based; in 2001, in the pages of Scientific American, Smalley explicitly equated APM, in the most general sense, with swarms of dangerous nanobots (potentially intelligent and conspiratorial, no less). Around that time, in his congressional testimony and other statements, atomically precise fabrication swung back and forth between being essential and impossible while my role in the field, in his view, swung from my being the man he acknowledged as inspiring his enthusiasm for nanotechnology, to my being an ignorant fellow, beyond reach of reason, and guilty of scaring “our children” with tales of monster nanobots that he claimed were my invention. (Smalley subsequently spoke out against Darwin.)

100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family And
by Sonia Arrison
Published 22 Aug 2011

Just like coal blackened the skies when humans first started burning it, there are concerns that the earth could become littered with nanodust. Some even see a day when tiny and intelligent nano robots, or “nano-bots,” would be able to self-replicate and pose a danger to all life on earth. This leads us then to an important question: is nanotech the coal of the second industrial revolution, and could its use lead to greater destruction than we have ever seen before? PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE VERSUS INNOVATION Perhaps the most famous critic of nanotechnology is Bill Joy, a cofounder and former chief scientist of Sun Microsystems. In a Wired magazine article in 2000, Joy worried that “we are being propelled into a new century with no plan, no control, no brakes.”

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Harris (New York: Springer, 2010), pp. 685–805. 60 Prachi Patel, “Nano Sponge for Oil Spills,” MIT Technology Review, June 2, 2008, www.technologyreview.com/nanotech/20846/. 61 “First Generation Prototype,” SeaSwarm, 2010, http://senseable.mit.edu/seaswarm/ss_prototype.html. 62 Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired, April 2000, www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html. The idea that nanobots will get out of control and consume all of the earth’s biomass is often referred to as the “gray goo” problem. 63 The Charlie Rose Show, November 26, 2002, www.michaelcrichton.net/video-charlierose-11-26-02.html. 64 See Bill McKibben, Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age (New York: Henry Holt, 2003). 65 For more on issue self-replicating technology, or the “gray goo” problem, see Robert A.

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In a Wired magazine article in 2000, Joy worried that “we are being propelled into a new century with no plan, no control, no brakes.” Specifically, he worried about robots, engineered organisms, and nano-bots that can self-replicate. “A bomb is blown up only once,” he wrote, “but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.”62 Such a scenario was scary enough for fiction writer Michael Crichton to seize upon as the main theme for his 2002 book Prey, in which a cloud of predator-programmed nano-bots escape from the lab where they were made. When television interviewer Charlie Rose asked Crichton why he chose self-replicating technology as his subject, Crichton replied that he wanted to write about the “Frankenstein” of today.

The Transhumanist Reader
by Max More and Natasha Vita-More
Published 4 Mar 2013

The siren calls for broad relinquishment are effective because they paint a picture of future dangers as if they were released on today’s unprepared world. The reality is that the sophistication and power of our defensive technologies and knowledge will grow along with the dangers. When we have “gray goo” (unrestrained nanobot replication), we will also have “blue goo” (“police” nanobots that combat the “bad” nanobots). The story of the twenty-first century has not yet been written, so we cannot say with assurance that we will successfully avoid all misuse. But the surest way to prevent the development of the defensive technologies would be to relinquish the pursuit of knowledge in broad areas.

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Nanoengineered fuel cells and solar cells will provide clean energy. Nanobots in our physical bodies will destroy pathogens, remove debris such as misformed proteins and protofibrils, repair DNA, and reverse aging. We will be able to redesign all of the systems in our bodies and brains to be far more capable and durable. And that’s only the beginning. There are also salient dangers. The means and knowledge exist in a routine college bioengineering lab to create unfriendly pathogens more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Unrestrained nanobot replication (“unrestrained” being the operative word here) would endanger all physical entities, biological or otherwise.

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Your lecture had a very high idea density, so I may have misheard some details. With regard to cryonics reanimation, I fully agree with you that preserving structure (i.e., information) is the key requirement, that it is not necessary to preserve cellular functionality. I have every confidence that nanobots will be able to go in and fix every cell, indeed every little machine in every cell. The key is to preserve the information. And I’ll also grant that we could lose some of the information; after all, we lose some information every day of our lives anyway. But the primary information needs to be preserved.

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
by Marc Goodman
Published 24 Feb 2015

Drexler worried that such a situation could, however, grow quickly out of control as assemblers began to convert all organic matter around them into the next generation of nanomachines in a process he famously called the “gray goo scenario,” one in which the earth might be reduced to a lifeless mass overrun by nanomachines. How might such a doomsday scenario play out? Let’s say in the future billions of nano-bots were released to clean up an oil spill disaster in an ocean. Sounds great, except that a minor programming error might lead the nano-bots to consume all carbon-based objects (fish, plants, plankton, coral reefs) instead of just the hydrocarbons in the oil. The nano-bots might consume everything in their path, “turning the planet to dust.” To understand just how quickly this might happen, consider the example Drexler provides in his book: Imagine such a replicator floating in a bottle of chemicals, making copies of itself …[T]he first replicator assembles a copy in one thousand seconds, the two replicators then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four, and the eight build another eight.

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Bridges and airplanes might be made from the material one day, and it will likely have a profound impact on the world of electronics. According to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, nanotechnology “will leave virtually no aspect of life untouched and is expected to be in widespread use by 2020.” Perhaps nanotech’s greatest contributions may come in the field of medicine, where a therapeutic nano-bot, a thousand times smaller than a cancer cell, could enter the bloodstream with nanoscale gold particles enlaced with anticancer drugs, bringing them directly to the precise location of a tumor. Moreover, nanotechnology, like synthetic biology, can be a form of programmable matter—matter that can change its physical properties such as shape, density, and conductivity based on user input or autonomous sensing.

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Though largely at the research-and-development stage today, nanoscale machines will make it possible to create nano-robots—further accelerating the already exponential changes going on in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence, someday creating robots a thousand times smaller than our own cells. These nano-bots will have huge implications for the field of robotics, able to build anything from rocket ships to injectable medical devices. Nanotechnology will also be immensely impactful in the world of computer processing, allowing us to build computers that are mindblowingly powerful—a nano-computer the size of a sugar cube could have more processing power than exists in the entire world today.

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
by Bill McKibben
Published 15 Apr 2019

(Presumably alongside Oscar, Max More’s goldendoodle, who also has a storage flask awaiting him.) Ray Kurzweil is an Alcor customer, but it’s clearly a fallback position; his real hope is not to die at all and instead to live long enough to reach the point where his failing cells can be repaired by nanobots in the blood. In fact, he says, those nanobot blood cells could perhaps power their own movement, dispensing with the need for a heart, which is after all just a large pump prone to failure. And Kurzweil’s pretty sure we’ll someday be able to connect our brains directly to the cloud. By the time we can implant a hundred thousand electrodes per square inch of scalp, there will be “no need to read a book—the computer just squirts its contents into your head.”14 Remember, this is the chief scientist at what is by some measures the biggest company in the planet’s history.

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Koch, Mary Koch, William “Bill” Kodas, Michael Kona Korea Krueger, Alan Kumkum Bhagya (soap opera) Kurzweil, Fredric Kurzweil, Ray Kyoto Protocol labor law labor unions Lahore, Pakistan laissez-faire Lanier, Jaron Las Vegas lead poisoning Leap Manifesto Lear, Norman Leary, Timothy Lee, Kai-fu LeFevre, Robert leukemia leverage Lewis, Seko Serge Lexington, Battle of libertarianism Libertarian Party life expectancy lightning strikes limestone limits Limits to Growth, The (Meadows) Lindbergh, Charles lobster fisheries Locklear, Samuel Lomé, Togo London Los Angeles Los Angeles Times Louisiana Lovelock, James Lowndes County, Alabama Luntz, Frank Lyme disease Machine Intelligence Research Institute MacLean, Nancy Maduro malaria Mallory, George Maltese Falcon (yacht) Mann, Michael Manson, Charles manufacturing MAOA gene variant marine species Maris, Bill markets marlin Mars Marsh, George Perkins Marshall Islands mass extinctions Matchright maturity Mauryan Empire Mayans Mayer, Jane McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index McCain, John Medicaid Medicare Megafire (Kodas) Mehlman, Maxwell Mekong Delta meltwater pulse 1A Mercer, Robert Merkle, Ralph Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge methane Mexico Miami Beach Microsoft migration Mill, John Stuart Miller, Dean Milner, Yuri Milosevic, Slobodan Minsky, Marvin Mises, Ludwig von Mississippi Delta MIT Technology Review Mongolia Monsanto Montgomery Bus Boycott Mont Pelerin movement Montreal Montreal Protocol More, Max mortality Moses, Robert Mount Kenya MSTN gene Muir, John Mumbai Murdoch, Rupert Musk, Elon Nabokov, Vladimir nanobot blood cells National Academy of Medicine National Academy of Sciences National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) National Cancer Institute National Coal Association National Energy Policy Act (proposed) National Geographic National Governors Association National Journal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) national parks and monuments Native Americans natural gas Nature Nawabshah, Pakistan Nazi Germany Nectome neoliberalism Neolithic period Nepal Netherlands New Deal NewsCorp New York New Yorker New York Times Magazine Nietzsche, Friedrich Niviana, Aka Nixon, Richard Nokia nonviolence North America North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) North Carolina North Korea Norway Novartis nuclear power Nuclear Test Ban Treaty nuclear weapons nutrition Obama, Barack Obamacare Objectivist oceans.

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That’s worth knowing, but it doesn’t answer the question of whether we should proceed. To figure that out, we need to think through other, even deeper, practical problems that come with change at this scale and at this speed. For instance, the end of the world. * * * Long ago—way back in 2000—Bill Joy, then chief scientist at Sun Microsystems, wrote a remarkable essay for Wired magazine called “The Future Does Not Need Us.” Joy, the father of the UNIX operating system, argued that the new technologies starting to emerge might go very badly wrong: fatal plagues from genetically engineered life forms, for instance, or robots that would take over and push us aside.

Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future
by Martin Ford
Published 4 May 2015

In Engines of Creation, Drexler called it the “gray goo” scenario and noted ominously that it “makes one thing perfectly clear: We cannot afford certain kinds of accidents with replicating assemblers.”19 Joy thought that something of an understatement, writing that “[g]ray goo would surely be a depressing ending to our human adventure on Earth, far worse than mere fire or ice, and one that could stem from a simple laboratory accident.”20 Yet more fuel was thrown on the fire in 2002 when Michael Crichton published his best-selling novel Prey—which portrayed swarming clouds of predatory nanobots and opened with an introduction that, once again, quoted passages from Drexler’s book. Public concern over gray goo and feasting nanobots was only part of the problem. Other scientists were beginning to question whether molecular assembly was feasible at all. Most prominent among the skeptics was the late (and aptly named) Richard Smalley, who had won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on nano-scale materials.

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But if they say it’s impossible, they’re probably wrong.” The debate intensified and became more personal, culminating with Smalley accusing Drexler of having “scared our children” and then concluding that “while our future in the real world will be challenging and there are real risks, there will be no such monster as the self-replicating mechanical nanobot of your dreams.”21 The nature and magnitude of nanotechnology’s future impact will depend in large measure on whether Drexler or Smalley ultimately prove to be correct in their assessment of the feasibility of molecular assembly. If Smalley’s pessimism prevails, then nanotechnology will continue to be a field focused primarily on the development of new materials and substances.

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Under the purview of the NNI, virtually all the nanotechnology funding went to research based on relatively traditional techniques in chemistry and materials science; the science of molecular assembly and manufacturing ended up with little or nothing. A number of factors were behind the sudden shift away from molecular manufacturing. In 2000, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy wrote an article for Wired magazine entitled “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” In his article, Joy highlighted the possibly existential dangers associated with genetics, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Drexler himself had discussed the possibility of out-of-control, self-replicating molecular assemblers that might use us—and just about everything else—as a kind of feedstock.

Global Catastrophic Risks
by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic
Published 2 Jul 2008

Development and use of molecular manufacturing appears to pose no risk of creating free-range replicators by accident at any point. Deliberately designing a functional self-replicating free-range nanobot would be no small task. In addition to making copies of itself, the robot also would have to survive in the environment, move around (either actively or by drifting - if it were small enough) , find usable raw materials, and convert what it finds into feedstock and power, which entails sophisticated chemistry. The robot also would require a relatively large computer to store and process the full blueprint of such a complex device. A nanobot or nanomachine missing any part of this functionality could not function as a free-range replicator ( Phoenix and Drexler, 2004).

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The range of structures that could be built with such technology greatly exceeds that accessible to the biological molecular assemblers (such as ribosome) that exist in nature. Among the things that a nanofactory could build: another nanofactory. A sample of potential applications : • microscopic nanobots for medical use • vastly faster computers • very light and strong diamondoid materials • new processes for removing pollutants from the environment • desktop manufacturing plants which can automatically produce a wide range of atomically precise structures from downloadable blueprints • inexpensive solar collectors • greatly improved space technology Introduction 25 • mass-produced sensors o f many kinds • weapons, both inexpensively mass-produced and improved conventional weapons, and new kinds of weapons that cannot be built without molecular nanotechnology.

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Phoenix and Treder review a number of global catastrophic risks that could arise with such an advanced manufacturing technology, including war, social and economic disruption, destructive forms of global governance, radical intelligence enhancement, environmental degradation, and 'ecophagy' (small nanobots replicating uncontrollably in the natural environment, consuming or destroying the Earth's biosphere) . In conclusion, they offer the following rather alarming assessment: In the absence of some type of preventive or protective force, the power of molecular manufacturing products could allow a large number of actors of varying types including individuals, groups, corporations, and nations - to obtain sufficient capability to destroy all unprotected humans.

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
by P. W. Singer
Published 1 Jan 2010

Boston College researchers have already built a chemically powered nanomotor that is just seventy-eight atoms in size, while those at a university in the Netherlands have made a solar-powered engine just fifty-eight atoms in size. Tiny engines allow tiny machines. And tiny machines may mean teeny-tiny robots, or “nanobots.” A major advancement in these happened in 2007, when David Leigh, a professor of chemistry at the University of Edinburgh, revealed that he had built a “nanomachine,” whose parts consisted of single molecules. When asked to describe to a normal person the significance of his discovery, Leigh said it would be difficult to predict.

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Such machines are still fairly limited in military applications; early models can only do things like copy a plant’s photosynthesis or move a molecule of water around. But military analysts see the potential of these prototypes’ one day becoming weapons that work at the molecular level, such as tiny missiles that could truly hit with pinpoint precision or nanobots designed to deconstruct a target from the inside out. Such minuscule designs actually mandate that the systems will have to have high autonomy, carrying out their missions without human controllers. First, to be useful, the robots will have to be “organic” to the team. That is, they will have to be relatively easy to use, not require special training, and if the goal is to saturate the battlefield, not require each and every small robot to have a soldier somewhere having to stop his mission and fly it.

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Mims, Norman Ministry of Trade and Industry, Japanese Minority Report (film) Minsky, Marvin Mirsad (drone) Mitchell, Billy MITRE company Mobile Detection Assessment Response System (MDARS) Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS) Moffett, William Moltke, Helmut von (the elder) Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (Lewis) Monroe, Marilyn Montecito (computer) Moore, Gordon Moore’s law Moravec, Hans Mori, Masahiro mothership concept MQ-8 Fire Scout (robot) mud battery MULE (Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment Vehicle) Mullen, Michael Multi-Function Agile Remote-Controlled Robot (MARCBOT) Murphy, Eddie (actor) Murphy, Edward (researcher) Murphy’s law Murray, Scott Musharraf, Pervez Myers, Mike My Lai massacre MySpace Nagl, John Nagle, Matthew Nahikian, Edward nanobots Napoleon I, emperor of France National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) National Center for Defense Robotics National Defense National Defense Authorization Act of 2001, National Institutes of Health National Missile Defense National Science Board National Science Foundation National Security Council Naval Academy, U.S.

The Lights in the Tunnel
by Martin Ford
Published 28 May 2011

Workers (consumers) in the West—supported by their lucrative online collaboration and piecemeal work—will be eager purchasers of these imports for decades to come. Ultimately, it is possible that advanced nanotechnology may begin to be deployed in the manufacturing sector. Nano-manufacturing will involve manipulating matter at the molecular and perhaps even atomic level. Self-replicating “nano-bots” may be designed to build products from the ground up. Nonetheless, all those millions of low wage workers will remain indispensable to the production process. Does this view of the future really seem more likely—more down to earth—than what I have presented? Can we expect this forecast to hold true decade after decade as technology continues advancing at its geometric pace?

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If it broadens to the degree that machines begin to encroach on a substantial fraction of the jobs that support consumers, the viability of capitalism will ultimately be threatened—unless, of course, our economic rules are adapted to reflect the new reality. *[ These issues are beyond the scope of this book. For a good introduction to this area, I’d recommend reading “Why the future doesn’t need us,” an article written by Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy for the April, 2000 issue of Wired Magazine. Web: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html ] About / Contacting the Author Martin Ford is the founder of a Silicon Valley-based software development firm. He has over 25 years experience in the fields of computer design and software development.

Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era
by James Barrat
Published 30 Sep 2013

In fact, a lot of the benefits that are attributed to the Singularity are due to nanotechnology, not artificial intelligence. Engineering at an atomic scale may provide, among other things: immortality, by eliminating on the cellular level the effects of aging; immersive virtual reality, because it’ll come from nanobots that take over the body’s sensory inputs; and neural scanning and uploading of minds to computers. However, say skeptics, out-of-control nano robots might endlessly reproduce themselves, turning the planet into a mass of “gray goo.” The “gray goo” problem is nanotechnology’s most well-known Frankenstein face.

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I’ve read almost every word Kurzweil has published, and listened to every available audio recording, podcast, and video. In 1999 I interviewed him at length for a documentary film that was in part about AI. I know what he’s written and said about the dangers of AI, and it isn’t much. Surprisingly, however, he was indirectly responsible for the subject’s most cogent cautionary essay—Bill Joy’s “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” In it, Joy, a programmer, computer architect, and the cofounder of Sun Microsystems, urges a slowdown and even a halt to the development of three technologies he believes are too deadly to pursue at the current pace: artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and biotechnology.

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Kurzweil’s book does underline the dangers of genetic engineering and nanotechnology, but it gives only a couple of anemic pages to strong AI, the old name for AGI. And in that chapter he also argues that relinquishment, or turning our backs on some technologies because they’re too dangerous, as advocated by Bill Joy and others, isn’t just a bad idea, but an immoral one. I agree relinquishment is unworkable. But immoral? “Relinquishment is immoral because it would deprive us of profound benefits. We’d still have a lot of suffering that we can overcome and therefore have a moral imperative to do that. Secondly, relinquishment would require a totalitarian system to ban the technology.

Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI
by John Brockman
Published 19 Feb 2019

In April 2000, there was a lengthy opinion piece in Wired titled “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us” by Bill Joy, co-founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems. He warned: Accustomed to living with almost routine scientific breakthroughs, we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies—robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology—pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before. Specifically, robots, engineered organisms, and nanobots share a dangerous amplifying factor: They can self-replicate. . . . [O]ne bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.

New Laws of Robotics: Defending Human Expertise in the Age of AI
by Frank Pasquale
Published 14 May 2020

The future of robotics can be inclusive and democratic, reflecting the efforts and hopes of all citizens. And the new laws of robotics can guide us on this journey. 2 Healing Humans There are two AI dreams in medicine. The first is utopian, straight out of science fiction novels. Care robots will spot and treat any disease, instantly. Nanobots will patrol our veins and arteries, busting clots and repairing damaged tissues. Three-dimensional printed organs, bone, and skin will keep us all looking and feeling young well into our eighties and nineties. With enough luck, even brains can be uploaded for perpetual safekeeping, with robotic bodies sleeving indestructible minds.1 Whatever its long-term merits, that sci-fi vision is far, far off—if it ever arrives at all.

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.… I suggested it as a thought experiment at a DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects] workshop a few years ago, and one of the military brass present said matter-of-factly, ‘That’s feasible’ ”; The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 121. 10. Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired, April 1, 2000, https://www.wired.com/2000/04/joy-2/. 11. Brad Turner, “Cooking Protestors Alive: The Excessive-Force Implications of the Active Denial System,” Duke Law & Technology Review 11 (2012): 332–356. 12. Michael Schmitt, “Regulating Autonomous Weapons Might Be Smarter than Banning Them,” Just Security, August 10, 2015, https://www.justsecurity.org/25333/regulating-autonomous-weapons-smarter-banning/. 13.

The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts
by Richard Susskind and Daniel Susskind
Published 24 Aug 2015

Now it costs a few thousand dollars.48 Companies like 23andMe, Navigenics, and deCODE offer commercial testing services from $99.49 In the field of ‘genome editing’, scientists search for problematic genes and actively intervene to change or remove them. Nanomedicine, the use of nanotechnology in a medical setting, is another field. Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman’s seventy-year-old prediction that we might one day ‘swallow the surgeon’50 has come true—there are already small nanobots that are able to swim through our bodies, relaying images, delivering targeted drugs, and attacking particular cells with a precision that makes even the finest of surgeons’ blades look blunt. (At Google X, one of Google’s research facilities, they are said to be developing a version of this.51) Non-humans are also playing a role.

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See Michael Spence, ‘Signaling in Retrospect and the Informational Structure of Markets’, Nobel Prize Lecture, 8 Dec. 2001. 25 Jonathan Koomey et al., ‘Implications of Historical Trends in the Electrical Efficiency of Computing’, Annals of the History of Computing, 33: 3 (2011), 46–54. 26 See ongoing discussions on Kurzweil’s website <www.kurzweilai.net>. Also see Bill Joy, ‘Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us’, Wired (Apr. 2000). Kurzweil checks his own homework in ‘How My Predictions are Faring’, Oct. 2010 <http://www.kurzweilai.net/images/How-My-Predictions-Are-Faring.pdf> (accessed 27 March 2015). 27 See e.g. Joel Garreau, Radical Evolution (2005), and ‘Coming To an Office Near You’, Economist, 18 Jan. 2014. 28 See e.g. the work of Singularity University at <http://singularityu.org> (accessed 23 March 2015). 29 For a clear introduction to the cloud and cloud computing, and a clear indication of its mounting signifiance, see Kuan Hon and Christopher Millard, ‘Cloud Technologies and Services’, in Cloud Computing Law, ed.

WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us
by Tim O'Reilly
Published 9 Oct 2017

The fusion of human with the latest technology doesn’t stop there. Already there are people trying to embed new senses—and make no mistake of it, GPS is already an addition to the human sensorium, albeit still in an external device—directly into our minds and bodies. Might we one day be able to fill the blood with nanobots—tiny machines—that repair our cells, relegating the organ and hip replacements of today, marvelous as they are, to a museum of antiquated technology? Or will we achieve that not through a perfection of the machinist’s art but through the next steps in the path trod by Luther Burbank? Amazing work is happening today in synthetic biology and gene engineering.

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You inspire me and are a testament to the fact that a corporation too is a human augmentation, enabling us to do things that we could never accomplish on our own. Over my years in the technology industry, I’d like to single out as mentors and sources of inspiration, directly or indirectly, Stewart Brand, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan, Bill Joy, Bob Scheifler, Larry Wall, Vint Cerf, Jon Postel, Tim Berners-Lee, Linus Torvalds, Brian Behlendorf, Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt, Pierre Omidyar, Ev Williams, Mark Zuckerberg, Saul Griffith, and Bill Janeway. I have drawn my map by studying the world you have helped to create.