from the let's-let-them-do-the-work dept.
Gordon Worley writes "There is a n article up at SPACE.COM about robots being built to explore Mars. The one described in the article is distributed and reminds me very much of the work done by Mark Tilden [of Los Alamos], though not enough details are given to decide how closely. " Read More for details on BiRoD — Biomorphic Robot with Distributed power.
from the great-stuff dept.
Strongly recommended by Foresight chairman Eric Drexler is this paper by Senior Associate Josh Hall. Josh writes "The final version of my ethics for machines paper is now available. Thanks to all those at the "Confronting Singularity" Gathering who read the draft and discussed the ideas with me."Do you agree with Eric that this work is important and should be expanded into a book?
from the technology-makes-strange-bedfellows dept.
BryanBruns writes "Publius enables anonymous publishing over the internet, with strong protection built in for privacy. An article in the Washington Post describes the system, developed by AT&T researchers, which will have a public test from July 28-September 28.
It seems like a good example of pro-actively developing tools to protect key values, which will be important, for example, in trying to make nanotech accessible and safe.
Anonymity raises some of the usual censorship issues like dangerous information, defamation, etc., versus the benefits of enabling free speech, especially to those whose governments would stop them from speaking out. "
from the Moravec-as-religious?! dept.
Virtual reality pioneer/musician JaronLanier has published a Critique of Machine Intelligence. Excerpt: The culture of machine consciousness enthusiasts often includes the expressed hope that human death will be avoidable by actually enacting the first thought experiment above, of transferring the human brain into a machine. Hans Moravec is one researcher who explicitly hopes for this eventuality. If we can become machines we don't have to die, but only if we believe in machine consciousness. I don't think it's productive to argue about religion in the same way we argue about philosophy or science, but it is important to understand when religion is what we are talking about. Do you agree with Jaron that the uploading meme is a religious concept?
from the driven-researcher dept.
Author RobertGrudin recommends this news article in US News & World Report. It includes a clear explanation of why researchers won't stop developing nanotech: "We are compelled to keep going. It is just so cool," says Paul Alivisatos, professor of chemistry at the University of California-Berkeley. "We are knocking on the door of creating new living things, new hybrids of robotics and biology. Some may be pretty scary, but we have to keep going." Read More for additional highlights.
from the little-machines-in-your-body dept.
For nanomedicine to be accepted someday, doctors and patients will need to get comfortable with small robots working in the human body. Brian Wang writes "waterproof microrobots made of gold and polymer over silicon can work in liquid (like bodily fluids). They can move small objects 100-300 microns. 100 microns is the size of large cells. These could be used for more precise surgery. These devices are leading the way to nanobots in medicine. Report is at msnbc link "
from the great-stuff dept.
If you missed the wonderful Spiritual Robots Symposium held at Stanford in April, featuring the best debate on machine intelligence seen in academia in years, you can now see it online courtesy of Dr Dobb's. Includes Frank Drake, Doug Hofstadter, John Holland, Bill Joy, Kevin Kelly, John Koza, Ray Kurzweil, Ralph Merkle and Hans Moravec.
from the diamonds-not-a-girl's-best-friend dept.
For friends of yours just getting oriented on nanotechnology, here's an interview of Foresight Advisor Ralph Merkle. Based on the interview is a digested article with photos and video clips (Windows Media Player only, unfortunately). One of the less-technical questions: "So what do I give my girlfriend when I want to get married." Merkle: "Diamonds arenít going to be that valuable. Youíre going to have to give something that shows a certain creative input that you provide." After this interview, Merkle left Xerox PARC for nanotech startup Zyvex, which is hiring
from the nanomania?-sounds-fun dept.
From BradHein's site we find The New York Times reports: "Once it is possible to create molecular circuits (as opposed to silicon-based chips) on a mass, affordable scale — by about 2010, according to some industry researchers — prepare for nanomania…If this vision turns out to be accurate, then we will find ourselves, before too long, in a previously unfathomable medical and ethical terrain. Our relation to aging, to mortality, to the messages sent us by our own bodies may be forever altered by infinitesimally small computers that diagnose our diseases, repair our ravaged cells and ultimately transform — for better or for worse — what it means to be human." CP: But can we live without mortality?
from the intriguing-but-scary dept.
davesag writes "The gRobots project is a forthcoming distributed supercomputing platform specifically developed for the simulation of evolvable nanotechnology. The project is both for the use of evolutionary computation to simulate the design of nanotechnological devices, and for the ongoing simulation of self-replicating devices. The system will be open-sourced so that the broadest range of researchers, evolutionary computing enthusiasts, simulation geeks, chemists, engineers, students and others can participate. " From the site: "We think that the safest and best way forward as these fields merge is to provide a virtual environment for self-replicating machines running evolving software to be tested, evaluated and even farmed." Good idea or too risky–what do you think?
