Most of the capabilities offered for hypothetical Drexlerian technology seem to be just quantitative increases in already existing trends:
Production of more nuclear weapons; nuclear arsenals are down from the Cold War, and vastly, vastly, more nuclear weapons could be constructed with existing military budgets
More computation enabling AI run amok; cf. Moore’s Law
Artificial diseases and disruptive organisms/‘grey goo’; cf. synthetic biology
More conventional weapons; there are already plenty of weapons to kill most people, but the fatality rate would decline as populations fell
Some kind of non-AGI robotic weapons that keep killing survivors even as population crashes, and aren’t recalled by either side, as in the SF story Second Variety; this is a question of improved robotics and manufacturing productivity, but ‘nanotech’ isn’t that different from very efficient automated factories
I don’t see much distinctive ‘nanotechnology x-risk’ that couldn’t be realized by continued ordinary technological progress and much improved automation. So any significance has to come from nanotechnology prospects boosting our expectation of those capabilities on some timescales, which demands some argument that nanotech is going to progress faster than expected and drive those fields ahead of trend..
The theory is that Drexlerian nanotech would dramatically speed up progress in several technical fields (biotech, medicine, computers, materials, robotics) and also dramatically speed up manufacturing all at the same time. If it actually works that way the instability would arise from the sudden introduction of new capabilities combined with the ability to put them into production very quickly. Essentially, it lets innovators get inside the decision loop of society at large and introduce big changes faster than governments or the general public can adapt.
So yes, it’s mostly just quantitative increases over existing trends. But it’s a bunch of very large increases that would be impossible without something like nanotech, all happening at the same time.
Most of the capabilities offered for hypothetical Drexlerian technology seem to be just quantitative increases in already existing trends:
Production of more nuclear weapons; nuclear arsenals are down from the Cold War, and vastly, vastly, more nuclear weapons could be constructed with existing military budgets
More computation enabling AI run amok; cf. Moore’s Law
Artificial diseases and disruptive organisms/‘grey goo’; cf. synthetic biology
More conventional weapons; there are already plenty of weapons to kill most people, but the fatality rate would decline as populations fell
Some kind of non-AGI robotic weapons that keep killing survivors even as population crashes, and aren’t recalled by either side, as in the SF story Second Variety; this is a question of improved robotics and manufacturing productivity, but ‘nanotech’ isn’t that different from very efficient automated factories
I don’t see much distinctive ‘nanotechnology x-risk’ that couldn’t be realized by continued ordinary technological progress and much improved automation. So any significance has to come from nanotechnology prospects boosting our expectation of those capabilities on some timescales, which demands some argument that nanotech is going to progress faster than expected and drive those fields ahead of trend..
The theory is that Drexlerian nanotech would dramatically speed up progress in several technical fields (biotech, medicine, computers, materials, robotics) and also dramatically speed up manufacturing all at the same time. If it actually works that way the instability would arise from the sudden introduction of new capabilities combined with the ability to put them into production very quickly. Essentially, it lets innovators get inside the decision loop of society at large and introduce big changes faster than governments or the general public can adapt.
So yes, it’s mostly just quantitative increases over existing trends. But it’s a bunch of very large increases that would be impossible without something like nanotech, all happening at the same time.
Good way of phrasing it.