It looks like FHI now want to start looking into nanotechnology/APM more, and build more capacity in that area: They’re hiring for researchers in a bunch of areas, one of which is:
Nanotechnology: analysing roadmaps to atomically precise manufacturing and related technologies, including possible intersections with advances in artificial intelligence, and potential impacts and strategic implications of progress in these areas.
That’s interesting. As far as I can tell, Eric Drexler was basically the person who kicked off interest + concern about this tech in the 1980s onwards.* His publications on the topic have accrued tens of thousands of citations. But Drexler’s work at FHI now focuses on AI.
(I came to this year-old post because some of the early transhumanist / proto-EA content (e.g. Bostrom and Kurzweil) seems to mention nanotech very prominently, sometimes preceding discussion of superintelligent AI, and I wanted to see if any aspiring EAs were still talking about it.)
The term “nano-technology” was first used by Norio Taniguchi in 1974, though it was not widely known. Inspired by Feynman’s concepts, K. Eric Drexler used the term “nanotechnology” in his 1986 book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology, which proposed the idea of a nanoscale “assembler” which would be able to build a copy of itself and of other items of arbitrary complexity with atomic control. Also in 1986, Drexler co-founded The Foresight Institute (with which he is no longer affiliated) to help increase public awareness and understanding of nanotechnology concepts and implications. The emergence of nanotechnology as a field in the 1980s occurred through convergence of Drexler’s theoretical and public work, which developed and popularized a conceptual framework for nanotechnology, and high-visibility experimental advances that drew additional wide-scale attention to the prospects of atomic control of matter.
One somewhat tangential thing you might find interesting is how prominent nanotech seems to be in many of the “Late 2021 MIRI Conversations”. Though none of the mentions there seem to be suggesting anyone should try to study or influence nanotech itself, more so that nanotech could be a key tool used by agentic AI systems.
It looks like FHI now want to start looking into nanotechnology/APM more, and build more capacity in that area: They’re hiring for researchers in a bunch of areas, one of which is:
That’s interesting. As far as I can tell, Eric Drexler was basically the person who kicked off interest + concern about this tech in the 1980s onwards.* His publications on the topic have accrued tens of thousands of citations. But Drexler’s work at FHI now focuses on AI.
(I came to this year-old post because some of the early transhumanist / proto-EA content (e.g. Bostrom and Kurzweil) seems to mention nanotech very prominently, sometimes preceding discussion of superintelligent AI, and I wanted to see if any aspiring EAs were still talking about it.)
*General impression from some of the transhumanist stuff I’ve been reading. The Wikipedia page on nanotechnology says:
One somewhat tangential thing you might find interesting is how prominent nanotech seems to be in many of the “Late 2021 MIRI Conversations”. Though none of the mentions there seem to be suggesting anyone should try to study or influence nanotech itself, more so that nanotech could be a key tool used by agentic AI systems.