On 25/09/2014 22:22, Matt Mahoney via AGI wrote:
2. Freitas has estimated ( http://www.foresight.org/nano/Ecophagy.html ) the maximum rate that nanotechnology can acquire hardware using molecular computation. It is limited by energy costs to be about the same as biology, which is already near the thermodynamic limit. A gray goo accident would take about as long as a pandemic.
This paper starts off talking about artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and molecular nanotechnology. However it seems to quickly narrow the topic to molecular nanotechnology - and "gray goo". Even if undetectable "grey goo" would take 20 months to assimilate the biosphere - as this paper claims - that is unlikely to bring much comfort to those concerned about rapid changes. The'll just say that what they are more concerned about is the combination of artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology. Also, they aren't very concerned about the "grey goo" being "undetectable". They mostly expect to be able to see the problem as it eats them. The paper's estimate in this latter case is rather less reassuring. It says: "The smallest plausible biovorous nanoreplicator has a molecular weight of ~1 gigadalton and a minimum replication time of perhaps ~100 seconds, in theory permitting global ecophagy to be completed in as few as ~10^4 seconds. However, such rapid replication creates an immediately detectable thermal signature enabling effective defensive policing instrumentalities to be promptly deployed before significant damage to the ecology can occur." -- __________ |im |yler http://timtyler.org/ [email protected] Remove lock to reply. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
