I have some relevant knowledge. I was involved in a relevant startup 20 years ago, but haven’t paid much attention to this area recently.
My guess is that Drexlerian nanotech could probably be achieved in less than 10 years, but would need on the order of a billion dollars spent on an organization that’s at least as competent as the Apollo program. As long as research is being done by a few labs that have just a couple of researchers, progress will likely continue to be slow to need much attention.
It’s unclear what would trigger that kind of spending and that kind of collection of experts.
Profit motives aren’t doing much here, due to a combination of the long time to profitability and a low probability that whoever produces the first usable assembler will also produce one that’s good enough for a large market share. I expect that the first usable assembler will be fairly hard to use, and that anyone who can get a copy will use it to produce better versions. That means any company that sells assemblers will have many customers who experiment with ways to compete. It seems
Maybe some of the new crypto or Tesla billionaires will be willing to put up with those risks, or maybe they’ll be deterred by the risks of nanotech causing a catastrophe.
Could a new cold war cause militaries to accelerate development? This seems like a medium-sized reason for concern.
What kind of nanotech safety efforts are needed?
I’m guessing the main need is for better think-tanks to advise politicians on military and political issues. That requires rather different skills than I or most EAs have.
There may be some need for technical knowledge on how to enforce arms control treaties.
There’s some need for more research into grey goo risks. I don’t think much has happened there since the ecophagy paper. Here’s some old discussion about that paper: Hal Finney, Eliezer, me, Hal Finney
I have some relevant knowledge. I was involved in a relevant startup 20 years ago, but haven’t paid much attention to this area recently.
My guess is that Drexlerian nanotech could probably be achieved in less than 10 years, but would need on the order of a billion dollars spent on an organization that’s at least as competent as the Apollo program. As long as research is being done by a few labs that have just a couple of researchers, progress will likely continue to be slow to need much attention.
It’s unclear what would trigger that kind of spending and that kind of collection of experts.
Profit motives aren’t doing much here, due to a combination of the long time to profitability and a low probability that whoever produces the first usable assembler will also produce one that’s good enough for a large market share. I expect that the first usable assembler will be fairly hard to use, and that anyone who can get a copy will use it to produce better versions. That means any company that sells assemblers will have many customers who experiment with ways to compete. It seems
Maybe some of the new crypto or Tesla billionaires will be willing to put up with those risks, or maybe they’ll be deterred by the risks of nanotech causing a catastrophe.
Could a new cold war cause militaries to accelerate development? This seems like a medium-sized reason for concern.
What kind of nanotech safety efforts are needed?
I’m guessing the main need is for better think-tanks to advise politicians on military and political issues. That requires rather different skills than I or most EAs have.
There may be some need for technical knowledge on how to enforce arms control treaties.
There’s some need for more research into grey goo risks. I don’t think much has happened there since the ecophagy paper. Here’s some old discussion about that paper: Hal Finney, Eliezer, me, Hal Finney