Why I worry about the future
I think of the future every now and then, as you might have noticed. Some of my writings on this topic - especially those found in my blog - might have been wildly optimistic - far too optimistic, even. I now look at the posts with that vibe with a mixture of amusement and embarassment. Sure, the future may hold some beneficial things in store for us, but the amount of risks is so incredibly large that these days I'd consider even "civilization will survive through the next 50 years" as a very optimistic estimate. I was about to type "humanity" instead of "civilization", but since it seems pretty probable that at least small fragmented colonies of humans survive, I chose civilization instead. Still, Earth's population being reduced to, say, a couple of thousand, still meets my criteria of a bleak future.
Why do I worry? Mostly because science seems to be heading towards molecular nanotechnology at a pretty rapid pace. The more science/science-fiction -literate of you have probably heard of molecular nanotechnology by now - basically, it's the science of designing machines that work on the same scale as bacteria and viruses, but which aren't limited to just using biological building blocks. Of course, this offers immense possibilities - like cell-sized machines that can patrol your bloodstream and selectively destroy any harmful substances, or even rebuild your cellular structure entirely - but it's the risks that seem to weigh the most on my mind right now.
The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology has identified at least eleven risks related to nanotechnology: Economic disruption from an abundance of cheap products, Economic oppression from artificially inflated prices, Personal risk from criminal or terrorist use, Personal or social risk from abusive restrictions, Social disruption from new products/lifestyles, Unstable arms race, Collective environmental damage from unregulated products, Free-range self-replicators (grey goo), Black market in nanotech (increases other risks), Competing nanotech programs (increases other risks), Attempted relinquishment (increases other risks).
Consider, for instance, this excerpt from the CRN dangers page: Molecular manufacturing raises the possibility of horrifically effective weapons. As an example, the smallest insect is about 200 microns; this creates a plausible size estimate for a nanotech-built antipersonnel weapon capable of seeking and injecting toxin into unprotected humans. The human lethal dose of botulism toxin is about 100 nanograms, or about 1/100 the volume of the weapon. As many as 50 billion toxin-carrying devices—theoretically enough to kill every human on earth—could be packed into a single suitcase. Guns of all sizes would be far more powerful, and their bullets could be self-guided. Aerospace hardware would be far lighter and higher performance; built with minimal or no metal, it would be much harder to spot on radar. Embedded computers would allow remote activation of any weapon, and more compact power handling would allow greatly improved robotics. These ideas barely scratch the surface of what's possible. Obviously, the risk is not as much that a government decides to pack six billion artificial insects into a suitcase and goes out to kill everyone - nuclear powers have had the capability to destroy all of humanity for decades now. Instead, think about a world where inexpensive nanomanufacture makes the manufacture of such weapons possible to everyone, including that depressed crazy next door who hates himself and hates the world and thinks everybody should die because his girlfriend just dumped him.
Governments may attempt to regulate this technology, but nanofacturies can potentially be so small - say, the size of a suitcase - and so cheap to mass-produce that enforcing the regulation might be extremly difficult. It might be that the only governments where social order will be ultimately maintained are the ones who are ready to institute draconian systems of tyranny that wouldn't be possible without nanotechnology. Like, say, bugging every square centimeter of the country with tiny nanocameras that capture everything you ever do, anywhere, anytime. They would be hooked up to a bank of nanotechnologically manufactured supercomputers that would watch your every movement and run pattern recognition analyses to detect the possibility of you building nanotechnological superweapons. Or you doing anything else that the government seems unacceptable, for that matter.
Then again, such ever-present surveillance could be used for more good ends as well, in what has been termed participatory panopticon. Imagine a similar world, with nanocameras in every home - but where everybody had access to their cameras, not just a central government. It would mean a complete loss of privacy, but maybe the tradeoff would be worth it - for even though people'd lose their privacy, nobody could abuse that information without also beeing seen by others. Criminal activities, embezzlement of funds, even rude behavior when you thought you were anonymous would all practically disappear. Eventually people would probably get used to the loss of privacy, and learn to not mind it even if somebody was watching them all the time. Still, it seems very likely that this would freeze or retard large parts of society's moral development - in regions where, for instance, homosexuality was looked at in an extremly negative light, would there ever be a chance for it to become more accepted when nobody'd have the courage to participate in gay behavior anymore?
Regardless of whether or not we consider such universal surveillance scenarios desirable or not, they seem inevitable if humanity wishes to survive and if nanomanufacture becomes as cheap and easy as it seems like it might do. And it might take people far longer to get comfortable with the thought than what would be needed - CRN is estimating that "exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing appears to be inevitable. It might be become a reality by 2010, likely will by 2015, and almost certainly will by 2020". This is not just the talk of a single organization - the National Academy of Sciences was cautiously optimistic of the possibilities of nanotech. Chemists have created nanorobotic, DNA-scale arms that could pave the way for nanotechnological manufacturing lines. Reports of nanotechnology developments seem to be coming at almost a regular pace now - it is not at all said that we'll have time to adapt our society to them in time.
And then there is the question of artificial intelligence. Once we have nanotechnology, it seems very possible that we can create artificial minds as well - simply by building a brute-force replica of the human brain, if nothing else. An AI could potentially run at far greater speeds than a human mind, thinking, say, a thousand times faster than a human - and that's just the beginning. If we wish to survive this era intact, we'd have to make sure that most, if not at all, artificial intelligences that get built within that time are programmed with goals that guarantee their friendliness to humanity - otherwise they might wipe us all out just by accident. As Eliezer Yudkowsky says in Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk, "[a badly programmed] AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else". Indeed, at the moment I see the development of a friendly, superintelligent AI that can take over the world and protect humanity before the nanotech revolution gets in full swing as pretty much the only way of guaranteeing our survival. And the chances of that happening seem quite small.
So, yes, I worry about the future. Though I feel its effect surprisingly little in my daily activities - the human mind seems unable to truly comprehend the thought of abstract existential risk on an emotional level, and I'm grateful for that. I'll do my best to help avert full disaster in a tiny way, by trying to spread awareness about these subjects and donating to organizations like Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Lifeboat Foundation. I'll do what little I can, and take solace in the fact that things might go well - and if I die in a huge nanotech-induced cataclysm, at least there won't be a me to suffer from it anymore.
And at least we'll have explained the Fermi paradox - the alien civilizations have all died in their own nanocalypses.
This work is by Kaj Sotala and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.