Revision as of 21:00, 21 May 2014

Definition

The widespread knoweledge about the hypothetical gray goo scenario was born from the fear that some form of productive nanosystem fails to stop replication and consumes the whole surface of the earth leaving only grey goo behind. Current knowledge is that an accident like this is unlikely and impossible in the early development stages and deliberate development could bring limited forms of this problem. One must not forget that there are other dangers that are equally or more dangerous.

If it is so dangerous why APM then?
Simply because there's a huge list of opportunities and potential products potentially improving our and natures world.

Factors for an accident

replicativity

In T.Level I self replicapility could be avoided by building many active components in parallel onto a chips surface.
Wether it is easier to create a T.Level I Nanofactory with replicativity or parallelity remains to be seen. 

In T.Level III productive nanosystems of the classic (deprecated) assembler type need to be replicative to produce macroscopic amounts of material.
Advanced nanofactories (in form of solid bricks) will almost certainly have self replication capability (think of 3D printing a printer chip).

Medical tools (in form of dispersed nanomachines) can be nonreplicative products this is the best security measure one can get. It may be reasonable to in general prohibit dispersion of nanosystems with replicative capability in liquids or gasses, but at some arbitrary size level here has to be drawn a line.

resources

• In technology level I it is quite hard to produce the building blocks. The simple assembler mechanisms (at this stage one can think of them as linkages) can only put those whole preproduced blocks together.
• In technology level II It's not yet clear which resources will be used.
• In technology level III the not natural occuring ethine (= welding gas = HCCH) among other unnatural resource materials will be used.

Disassembly of nonstiff disordered natural substances is way harder then assembly of carefully choosen synthetic ones. In fact in many cases it's as good as impossible at room temperature. The humic substances [TODO add picture] for example are hopelessly to complex to use them as resource material. Certain minerals may be directly disassemblable with substantial effort in the not so near future. The carbon dioxide in the air constitutes a vast reservoir of easily attainable building material. This source could pose a threat. To investigate: minimal atmosphere-floating solar replicators (speculativity warning!)

energy

Productive nanosystems will likely get their energy from the chips surface - a good security measure.

mobiliy

Productive nanosystems will always have their components firmly linked together in machine phase. Only macroscopic blocks will seperate.
[todo: describe: policy exceptions limits]

Exponential assembly puts an absolute insurmountable limit to spacial spread of replicated structure.

mutations

AP systems don not evolve by themselves. A mutation of a productive nanosystem to a new ecosystem is as likely as that firefox mutates to firegodzilla and infiltrates new operating systems. Due to the very different architecture of living organisms and APM systems radiation has a completely different effect on them.

Productive nanosystems may loose efficiency or function. Logical errors (which still are functional) are extremely unlikely.
Biological systems also loose efficiency and function but have a non neglectable chance to suffer still functional logical errors aka mutation instead

A good description of part of the situation: alive-ness of computer viruses
Also: can computer viruses evolve
Or: "Nanofuture" chapter 8 self replication by J. Storr Hall

replication data

Is likely to be stored semi locally (millimeter scale) since it's conevient and disater proof.

Deliberate Malicous Intent

(speculativity warning!)

• Atmospheric units that use CO2 as building material and sunlight as energy source potentially endangering plant life. In the worst case those thing could create Hydrogen Cyanide or NOx.
  
• Some form of green goo medical tools with replicative capabilities that uses sugar and other common bio-molecules as resource. Medical tools will by definition be in form of seperated particles suspended in fluid phase and thus much more mobile. There are no known investigations to break up sugar for this process.
  
• When there is a whole global network of an AP system the hole system could be infected by a computer virus creating all sorts of strange effects from useful or funny over weird to really bad stuff. (Related: techno plants)

External links

• Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators, with Public Policy Recommendations by Robert A. Freitas Jr.