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Molecular Manufacturing and 21st Century Policing

March 29, 2006 by Thomas J. Cowper

Will nanofactories foster global anarchy? Will nations devolve into a technologically-driven arms race, the winner dominating or destroying the planet with powerful molecular-manufacturing-enabled weapons? Or will the world’s Big Brothers grow larger and more tyrannical, using advanced nanotechnology to “protect” their law abiding masses through increasing surveillance, control and internal subjugation? A law-enforcement executive asks the tough questions.… read more

Topics: Survival/Defense

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Singularities and Nightmares

March 28, 2006 by David Brin

Options for a coming singularity include self-destruction of civilization, a positive singularity, a negative singularity (machines take over), and retreat into tradition. Our urgent goal: find (and avoid) failure modes, using anticipation (thought experiments) and resiliency — establishing robust systems that can deal with almost any problem as it arises.… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Quantum | Singularity/Futures | Social Networking/Web/Education

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Is AI Near a Takeoff Point?

March 28, 2006 by J. Storrs Hall

Computers built by nanofactories may be millions of times more powerful than anything we have today, capable of creating world-changing AI in the coming decades. But to avoid a dystopia, the nature (and particularly intelligence) of government (a giant computer program — with guns) will have to change.… read more

Topics: Cognitive Science/Neuroscience

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Nanotech Basics

March 27, 2006 by Chris Phoenix, Mike Treder

Members of the Global Task Force of The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN) have written 11 key essays addressing the profound implications of molecular manufacturing. They were published in the current issue of Nanotechnology Perceptions and are also available on KurzweilAI.net for discussion on the MindX forum.… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science

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Nanotechnology Dangers and Defenses

March 27, 2006 by Ray Kurzweil

To avoid dangers such as unrestrained nanobot replication, we need relinquishment at the right level and to place our highest priority on the continuing advance of defensive technologies, staying ahead of destructive technologies. An overall strategy should include a streamlined regulatory process, a global program of monitoring for unknown or evolving biological pathogens, temporary moratoriums, raising public awareness, international cooperation, software reconnaissance, and fostering values of liberty, tolerance, and respect for knowledge and diversity.… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science

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Molecular Manufacturing: Too Dangerous to Allow?

March 26, 2006 by Robert A. Freitas Jr.

Despite the risks of molecular manufacturing, such as global ecophagy, replication is not new. Engineered self-replication technologies are already in wide commercial use and can be made inherently safe. And defenses we’ve already developed against harmful biological replicators all have analogs in the mechanical world that should provide equally effective, or even superior, defenses.… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science | Social Networking/Web/Education

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The Need For Limits

March 24, 2006 by Chris Phoenix

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.… read more

Topics: Nanotech/Materials Science

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Revolution in a Box: An Interview with the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology

March 22, 2006 by Mike Treder, Chris Phoenix, Jamais Cascio

The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has a modest goal: to ensure that the planet navigates the emerging nanotech era safely. CRN’s founders discuss the promises and perils of nanotechnology, as well as the need for a middle ground between resignation and relinquishment.… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Nanotech/Materials Science

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Our Bodies, Our Technologies: Ray Kurzweil’s Cambridge Forum Lecture (Abridged)

March 16, 2006 by Ray Kurzweil

In the 2020s, we’ll see nanobots, blood-cell-sized devices that can go inside the body and brain to perform therapeutic functions. But what happens when we have billions of nanobots inside the capillaries of our brains, non-invasively, widely distributed, expanding human intelligence, or providing full-immersion virtual reality?… read more

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Reprogramming your Biochemistry for Immortality: An Interview with Ray Kurzweil by David Jay Brown

March 8, 2006 by Ray Kurzweil

Scientists are now talking about people staying young and not aging. Ray Kurzweil is taking it a step further: “In addition to radical life extension, we’ll also have radical life expansion. The nanobots will be able to go inside the brain and extend our mental functioning by interacting with our biological neurons.”… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity | Innovation/Entrepreneurship

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The Physical Constants as Biosignature: An anthropic retrodiction of the Selfish Biocosm Hypothesis

February 28, 2006 by James N. Gardner

Two recent discoveries have imparted a renewed sense of urgency to investigations of the anthropic qualities of our cosmos: the value of dark energy density is exceedingly small but not quite zero; and the number of different solutions permitted by M-theory is, in Susskind’s words, “astronomical, measured not in millions or billions but in googles or googleplexes.”… read more

Topics: Quantum | Singularity/Futures

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Wolfram and Kurzweil Roundtable Discussion

February 24, 2006 by Ray Kurzweil, Stephen Wolfram

“The most dramatic possibility is the universe started from a simple initial condition that had some simple geometrical symmetry. It might be the case that if we turn our telescope off to the west, and look at the configuration of the universe in the west, it might be identical to the configuration of the universe in the east [...]“… read more

Topics: Innovation/Entrepreneurship | Quantum

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From ENIAC to Everyone: Talking with J. Presper Eckert

February 23, 2006 by Alexander Randall 5th

J. Presper Eckert reveals the inside story of the invention of ENIAC, the first practical, all-electronic computer, and debunks some myths in this forgotten interview. “It is shocking to have your life work reduced to a tenth of a square inch of silicon,” he said.… read more

Topics: AI/Robotics | Innovation/Entrepreneurship

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Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine and Nanosurgery

February 13, 2006 by Robert A. Freitas Jr.

The ability to build complex diamondoid medical nanorobots to molecular precision, and then to build them cheaply enough in sufficiently large numbers to be useful therapeutically, will revolutionize the practice of medicine and surgery.… read more

Topics: Biomed/Longevity

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Sander Olson Interviews Ray Kurzweil

February 10, 2006 by Sander Olson, Ray Kurzweil

Nonbiological intelligence is multiplying by over 1,000 per decade. Once we can achieve the software of intelligence, which we will achieve through reverse-engineering the human brain, non-biological intelligence will soar past biological intelligence. By the 2040s, nonbiological intelligence will be a billion times more powerful than the 10^26 computations per second that all biological humanity represents.… read more

Topics: Singularity/Futures

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