Nano Future 2030

Not exactly nano, but we can speculate on how to clean up such a problem.
For one possible solution today, I whipped up a short walk through of one way to approach this problem. Wish they had put five different teams on this oil slick and funded them so we had five totally independent solutions happening in parallel. A bit late now, but what the hey.

You can see my suggestion here.

• Windows media version, 20 megs, better quality.
• MPG, 5 megs, but more grainy.

Hopefully, in a decade or two, we will have nano tools that make such deep drilling less dangerous. Nano in this situation, means we have better robots down there that can work with as much dexterity as a human. They know what is going on, because they can send sensors into the pipes and measure anything that is important. They can build barriers or pipes in place and thereby control the flow of oil more easily then today. Now you have to figure it out first, build it and ship it to the well head. In the future, we hope they can make changes at the well head as needed.

In a way, it’s good to not drill now. Make this oil hungry civilization find something else to eat for a while. Save the resources for later when they can be drilled more safely.

We need small parts and structures to build anything of consequence in nanotechnology. We can not yet build functional parts that can be assembled into a larger device. So far, we’ve reached the level of a sharpened stick to poke and prod things apart , scan surfaces, or to rearrange atoms on a surface. We need machined parts. We need the ability to manipulate those parts so they can be assembled into useful devices.

Twenty or thirty years from now, many things will be made of diamond because carbon is cheap, light and strong. During these early years, diamond is a great material for the fabrication of complex mechanical parts, but we can’t build them yet because we can’t sculpt, machine or cast these tiny parts. We need a way to create small parts – that is, objects in the range of 10 to 100 nanometers in size.

One speculation path is to consider how they will build these parts 50 years from now. For research, the most efficient method would be to grow them under computer control by beam deposition of carbon atoms into a diamond crystal matrix. Sure, we may find that impossible without additional techniques. As Dr. Drexler has said, if you try to stick carbon atoms onto a diamond surface, you may get graphite instead of diamond because it is easier to form one than the other. Somehow you have to handle that issue and the solution is to try it and then find a solution – if possible.

Also, in the early years, we need to build many devices in a research environment. That means we want to build a small number of parts, assemble them and create a few test items instead of mass production. It would be good to have a fabrication process that gave us the option to build anything on demand. We would use a CAD program, draw up the specs and have the device fabricated inside our nanolab.

The most similar idea is the desktop 3D printer that exists now for the creation of plastic parts from CAD drawings. The plastic is applied in layers to build up a shape. In diamond parts, we would love to apply carbon atoms in layers to build up diamond parts. But the atoms have to become part of the crystal, not just adhere to the surface.

It is obvious that carbon atoms applied to other carbon atoms form diamond under enough pressure and temperature. The question is, can we duplicate that chemical bonding process in a deposition oven.

It seems reasonable that if you slam carbon atoms into a diamond substrate, there might be conditions under which the atom is bonded to the crystal structure and the diamond grows. Perhaps at a certain temperature, and from a certain angle, with a certain kinetic energy, an atom will bond if it hits the crystal plane at a favorable position. Maybe not. But if I had an electron microscope, a diamond substrate, and a source of ionized carbon atoms somewhat like the electron beam of a CRT television, I would rotate the temperature controlled, diamond surface back and forth through a 120 degree angle while the carbon beam applied one, two or many atoms to the surface. And scan the beam over the surface to create all combinations of angle, energy, and temperature. Then scan or evaluate the surface for growth of diamond versus graphite at all locations where the beam hit the surface.

If you find a temperature, an angle, and a kinetic energy where carbon is added to the crystal rather than forming unwanted graphite, you will have a diamond printer tool.

Seems worth the try to me, but the PHD’s who work with this stuff on a daily basis may have a different perspective.

It’s April, 2010 and we are moving forward. I want to point out a reorganization of the site for better access to old posts and to build a network of related posts. I hope it helps.

The other main addition is to place links to all nano device concepts on this site that either originated here or were developed in association with other people.

The nanofactory project, created with Dr. Eric Drexler in 2006, was my first nano concept that received the energy and time to actually reach completion and it led to the creation of this site in the next year or two after that. I want to highlight that project and the smaller ones that have developed after that early work.

You can see the nanofactory animation at

• 300Meg Version
• 100 Meg Version

The nanofactory started with a request for money contributions from the Foresight Institute. I wanted to help, but money was not the best way for me to help at that time. I ask if they needed any graphics work since I am a 3d animator and have the tools. Dr Drexler needed a few things and he and I got to talking about what we could do together to illustrate his ideas around a nanofactory or nano assembler. We thought it might take a week or two.

Nine months later we had a five minute animation of a completely designed nanofactory. Complete only in the sense that it presented untested ideas for how most of the functions might be approached. Dr Drexler had detailed ideas and simulation tested concepts behind the molecular machinery at the front end of the nanofactory where fuel molecules are torn apart and carbon atoms are build up into diamond blocks. Nothing else in the roughly 90% of the factory was specified or designed when we started. For me, this project turned out to be 50% design and 50% animation. We would decide we needed to show this or that function – such as how to move sub-assemblies around from place to place within the factory – and I would try to come up with a reasonable mechanical device to accomplish that function. And then build it and animate it.

Once or twice I remember coming up with something that just did not work and Dr. Drexler would step in and fix it. And then I’d rebuild it and reanimate it. Thankfully, most of my designs worked as illustrations of one design out of many that might solve a problem. I’m particularly proud of the forest of final assembler stages shown in the final stages of the nanofactory animation. You see a forest of tall machines taking diamond blocks from a transport system on the floor and mechanically placing those blocks into the growing wall of a device under construction. All but one machine fades away and you see a, perhaps overly complex mechanism for picking up, orienting, and applying of the blocks to the active surface.

I’m not the best animator in the world, but this nanofactory was much harder to design than it was to animate. Simple mechanical subjects are probably the easiest thing to animate.

Dr Drexler contributed one graphic element to the animation that he created himself after I gave up or after we both agreed we needed something better. The zooming in sequence of the factory’s internal details is his creation and made by him from scratch. The man can handle graphics a lot better than I can do chemistry. Once you go through the small window and see fuel molecules, rotating selector wheels and the moving pyramids that grab the carbon atoms, you are looking at my animation of his detailed chemical concepts of how to manipulate atoms. In that room, I built what he told me to build. Once we moved out of this room where individual atoms are manipulated, we get into my 3d design of the larger factory. Originally we were going to use a different design to assemble the cubes into larger structures. That first concept was to build larger and larger cubes from smaller cubes until you had one big cube(or device).
I pushed for the extruder concept because it seemed better to build a product a layer at a time from one side to the other. Not sure which method is best.

And believe me, I don’t expect to see these thing in a real nanofactory. Maybe something trying to do a similar job, but there will be a hundred ways to do most things inside the factory. This animation was a good way to get across a concept. Dr Drexler said that before a talk, his audience might have 50 different ideas on what “molecular manufacturing” meant. After watching this animation, everybody in the room knew what Dr Drexler meant by the term.

It was worth the nine months.

I’ve written before on the need for placing limits on AI development to protect the human race from being overwhelmed by AI entities who can develop faster than we biological animals. I offer these thoughts on what is needed to ensure our own survival.

Asimov had the 3 laws which were to be applied to robots and that was a good first effort. Most sci-fi movies, that present a robot or AI, imply that the entity could grow or evolve to where they could out perform a human in some way and thereby gain power over the humans. We don’t really have a way to limit AI development so it would be good to be able to discuss what makes a good or bad design.

I see AI overrun of humans as a realistic danger because humans, as a group, evolve more slowly than an individual AI could. When you consider the concepts behind the Singularity, it seems likely that once AI programs reach parity with human intelligence and creativity, they could surpass us in a few years and then the fun would begin. If they can evolve ahead of us to the same extent that we have evolved ahead of dogs, why would we be treated any differently than we treat dogs? Just because many dogs are loved, doesn’t prevent cruelty or the destruction of dogs that get in our way.

I believe the critical difference between dangerous AI and safe AI is the lack of or the incorporation of self awareness in the first few generations of AI’s. Consider that only the higher animals can recognize themselves in a mirror. The lower animals are all pretty hard wired to fulfill basic needs. If they are territorial, they defend territory when it is important to their survival or reproduction. They don’t vary from that fixed program of behavior. Our AI’s would not be territorial unless we decided they needed to be. Hopefully, they would not be power hungry unless we design them to be. So, a “lower” AI would resemble most animals in that it attempts to fulfill it’s needs and behave as it is designed to behave. Doesn’t mean it would act like an animal. It could be a factory manager, design work flow, manage production, interface with employees and still have limited behavior by design.

It’s more of a problem when you get to “higher” AI’s that are free to consider different goals and to evolve their own goals. We will need them to think about a wide range of options and situations. This ability is essential to a creative, problem solving AI. Our problem comes when we try to make “people” out of these AI’s and give them the same motivations we have as animals.

Emotion is not something you have built in just for the fun of it. Emotion and feelings are the motivations for your own behavior and the behavior of any sadistic ruler. Without emotion you would not do anything but sit and stare until you starved to death. Even rational thoughts are motivated by emotional needs and desires. The exact same thing will be true for any functional AI. Something has to motivate their behavior according to a hierarchy of needs. The lack of feeling in Commander Data is a physical impossibility and nothing more than the emotionally driven, lack of expression on the face of any Rambo or Vulcan.

So, AI’s will be driven by something we can call emotion even if they don’t cry or wail when things go wrong. Think of source code where if ( anger_variable1 > x) then choose behavior option 14 , to be an emotional statement. We need to prevent this emotion from driving their behavior outside of designated, and acceptable limits the way it drives humans outside of our own acceptable limits.

Self awareness might be the key. If you are not able to be aware of yourself and do not ever consider your own needs for re-evaluation, I believe you will not change your behavior as it applies to taking care of yourself. You will not decide that you need more money or power since you will not consider this “self” to be any more than any of the hundreds of other variables that must be monitored and maintained within limits.

You (or the AI) can certainly take care of yourself (if thirsty, go drink water) without having self-awareness. Self-awareness, as I’m using it, is thinking and feeling about yourself and how you are getting/not getting what you want, about what “you” need and what could be better or worse for “you”.

Self-awareness is the awareness of yourself in time and space and with respect to time and space. In other words, don’t provide the hardware/software to consider yourself in this unique way and you won’t make decisions and goals with respect to that self. You won’t take action to improve or defend this thing called “self”. For a full description of self-awareness as used here, see this article.