Radical abundance
The founding father of nanotechnology predicts the coming changes to the economy and the environment as more manufacturing is done with extreme precision on the atomic level at a significantly lower cost.
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What Hacker News says
- Reread *The Diamond Age* - Neal Stephenson book on nanotech - Part way through *The Eighth Day of Creation* - A detailed history of biological accomplishments and discoveries in the 20th century; constructed from interviews with the heros - *Radical Abundance* - Drexler book on nanotech - *Neuromancer* - Inspirational scifi novel with a literary flare - *Children of Ruin* - Children of Time sequel; for those who like 8-legged creatures!- As a solution to the inverse folding problem, this is THE enabling technology for molecular nanotechnology. I suggest anyone interested in this read Drexler’s Radical Abundance which talks about what is possible with atomically precise manufacturing built with custom designed proteins.
Radical Abundance in video form: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1bw6Zi17DBI
If anyone is interested in making this happen, contact me.
- The Case for Space by Robert Zubrin.
Puts recent developments by SpaceX in context, and shows how we really are about to settle the cosmos in an economically sustainable way. A call to action to anyone who wants to participate to start making space companies now.
Radical Abundance by K. Eric Drexler.
Re-introduces the concept of atomically precise manufacturing (aka molecular nanotechnology) and shows how it can solve basically all major global problems from climate change to energy crisis to wars over resources.
- > Overtake and spread computation to security vulnerable computers (presumably, basically every computer)
You could backdoor computers, sure. Spread your own computation to them? You just can't get a better-than-GPT-4 model to run at real-time speeds decentralized over wide area networks. Literally impossible. There's not the bandwidth, not the local compute hardware, and no access to specialized inference hardware.
> Gain a physical presence by convincing humans to build critical physical components. For example by sending them emails and paying them for it.
Pay for it using what money?
> Use that presence to start a grey-goo like world takeover through replicating assemblers (they don't have to be tiny)
As someone who actually works on this, you have no idea what you are talking about.
1. Grey-goo scenarios are pure science fiction that were NEVER feasible, and known to be impossible even back in the 80's when the media misunderstood Drexler's work and ran with this half-baked idea. For a full treatment, see Drexler's own retrospective in his more recent book, Radical Abundance.
2. Nanotechnology is an extremely hard problem that is not in the slightest bit bottlenecked by compute power or intelligence capability. The things that are hard in achieving atomically precise manufacturing are not things that you can simulate on a classical computer (so a years-long R&D process is required to sort out), and there is no way to train an ML model to make better predictions without that empirical data.
People like Yudkowsky talk about AIs ordering genome sequences from bio labs and making first-generation nanotechnology by mixing chemicals in a test tube. This is pure fantasy and reflects badly on them as it shows how willing they are to generalize based on fictional evidence.
- I did not mean bionanotechnology, and neither did Smalley. He offered that as a critique against Drexlar’s diamondoid molecular manufacturing, in a successful political coup to claim the billions in research dollars that were promised as part of the National Nanotechnology Initiative.
Because of Richard Smalley that money went towards material science and chemical research instead of the molecular manufacturing it was promised for. Even though, as you point out, in terms of fact the critique only applied to life-like bionanotechnology.
The history of this is laid out pretty well—with a surprisingly minimal amount of sour grapes—in Drexler‘s book Radical Abundance.
- Looks like a pretty good list. I saw another reference to The Box somewhere recently (actually, I think it was here on HN) and I kinda want to read that.
FWIW, I'll share a short list of my own, including stuff I've already read, am reading, or plan to read soon:
1. How To Create A Mind - Ray Kurzweil. (already read) Not a literal "how to" on creating a mind, but an interesting read from an AI pioneer. Coming at it as an "AI layman", I found it thought provoking and suggestive of other topics to explore and books to read. Which leads to:
2. On Intelligence - Jeff Hawkins. (reading now) - I've seen some reviews of the Kurzweil book suggest that his material is very derivative of Hawkins' HTM, and - to be fair - Kurzweil does mention Hawkins' work in HTCAM. Since I'd been planning to read On Intelligence for, like, forever anyway, now seemed like a good time to go ahead and read it, to compare/contrast it and the Kurzweil book. So far I can see that they are going down some similar paths, and between the two of them, I feel like they may be onto something. This is really whetting my appetite for getting more into AI stuff again.
3. NOS4A2 - Joe Hill (already read) - very fun bit of summer fiction. A neat re-invention of the vampire tale. This was my first Joe Hill novel, and I enjoyed it. The Stephen King influence does show through pretty strongly, but this is still very original in it's own right. Joe Hill may never becomes as prolific or famous as his father (or maybe he will, who knows?) but he's a pretty good writer. Fun book if you're looking for fiction and like "horror" themed stories.
4. Summa Technologiae - Stanislaw Lem (reading now) - it's hard to give a good description of this, as I haven't read much of it. How about I just give the Wikipedia link, and you can get the summary from there. I'll just say that I'm enjoying this so far. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summa_Technologiae
5. Who Owns The Future - Jaron Lanier (reading now) - I had already bought this and had it queued up, and then the author came up in a recent HN thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6067921), which prompted me to move it up the stack a bit. I think I disagree with the author on a number of things, but the thing is, it's probably good to read books by people you disagree with, to help avoid tunnel vision.
6. Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think - Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler - (planning to read) - I get the feeling that Lanier would consider his work something of a counterpoint to this one, as he touches on the idea of "Abundance" in what seems to be a dismissive way, early in WOTF. From the description on Amazon.com:
We will soon be able to meet and exceed the basic needs of every man, woman and child on the planet. Abundance for all is within our grasp. This bold, contrarian view, backed up by exhaustive research, introduces our near-term future, where exponentially growing technologies and three other powerful forces are conspiring to better the lives of billions. An antidote to pessimism by tech entrepreneur turned philanthropist, Peter H. Diamandis and award-winning science writer Steven Kotler.
7. Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization - K. Eric Drexler - (planning to read) - I know, there's sort of a theme going on here. A lot about the future and what effect technology will or won't have. This particular title focus specifically on nanotech. From the Amazon description:
K. Eric Drexler is the founding father of nanotechnology—the science of engineering on a molecular level. In Radical Abundance, he shows how rapid scientific progress is about to change our world. Thanks to atomically precise manufacturing, we will soon have the power to produce radically more of what people want, and at a lower cost. The result will shake the very foundations of our economy and environment.
8. Infinite Progress: How the Internet and Technology Will End Ignorance, Disease, Poverty, Hunger, and War - Byron Reese (planning to read) - Another book on this theme about technology and the future. From amazon:
For years we've been inundated with bleak forecasts about the future. But in this electrifying new book, author Byron Reese debunks the pessimistic outlook as dangerous, and shows instead how technology will soon create a dramatically better world for every person on earth, beyond anything we have dared to imagine. With the art of a storyteller, Reese synthesizes history, technology, and sociology into an exciting, fast-moving narrative that shows how technological change has had dramatic effects on humanity in the past. He then looks forward at the technological changes we know are coming--from genetics, nanotechnology, robotics, and many other fields--and explores how they will vastly increase wealth, prolong our lifespans, redefine human rights, and alter the social fabric of the world.
Reese explains how the Internet, human ingenuity, and technological innovation will help us forever end the five historic plagues of human existence: ignorance, disease, poverty, hunger, and war. With a rational and researched optimism, Reese sees the future not as a world in a downward spiral, but as destined for progress beyond our imaginations.
9. Creative Intelligence: Harnessing the Power to Create, Connect, and Inspire - Bruce Nussbaum (planning to read) - This caught my eye at Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago, and is queued up waiting to be read. From the amazon.com description:
Offering insights from the spheres of anthropology, psychology, education, design, and business, Creative Intelligence by Bruce Nussbaum, a leading thinker, commentator, and curator on the subjects of design, creativity, and innovation, is first book to identify and explore creative intelligence as a new form of cultural literacy and as a powerful method for problem-solving, driving innovation, and sparking start-up capitalism. Nussbaum investigates the ways in which individuals, corporations, and nations are boosting their creative intelligence — CQ—and how that translates into their abilities to make new products and solve new problems. Ultimately, Creative Intelligence shows how to frame problems in new ways and devise solutions that are original and highly social.
10. Intuition Pumps And Other Tools for Thinking by Daniel C. Dennett (planning to read) - c'mon, it's Daniel Dennett!
11. Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking - Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander (planning to read) - c'mon, it's Douglas Hofstadter!
