Not just “some robots or nanomachines” but “enough robots or nanomachines to maintain existing chip fabs, and also the supply chains (e.g. for ultra-pure water and silicon) which feed into those chip fabs, or make its own high-performance computing hardware”.
If useful self-replicating nanotech is easy to construct, this is obviously not that big of an ask. But if that’s a load bearing part of your risk model, I think it’s important to be explicit about that.
Not just “some robots or nanomachines” but “enough robots or nanomachines to maintain existing chip fabs, and also the supply chains (e.g. for ultra-pure water and silicon) which feed into those chip fabs, or make its own high-performance computing hardware”.
My guess is software performance will be enough to not really have to make many more chips until you are at a quite advanced tech level where making better chips is easy. But it’s something one should actually think carefully about, and there is a bit of hope in that it would become a blocker, but it doesn’t seem that likely to me.
Not just “some robots or nanomachines” but “enough robots or nanomachines to maintain existing chip fabs, and also the supply chains (e.g. for ultra-pure water and silicon) which feed into those chip fabs, or make its own high-performance computing hardware”.
If useful self-replicating nanotech is easy to construct, this is obviously not that big of an ask. But if that’s a load bearing part of your risk model, I think it’s important to be explicit about that.
My guess is software performance will be enough to not really have to make many more chips until you are at a quite advanced tech level where making better chips is easy. But it’s something one should actually think carefully about, and there is a bit of hope in that it would become a blocker, but it doesn’t seem that likely to me.