In the next few decades, research in some rapidly developing fields of science may result, instead of means for peace and prosperity, in the production of new weapons of mass destruction. This may happen in such areas as nanotechnology, robotics (the development of artificial intelligence) and genetic engineering. It is likely that there will be no need for large-scale (state-run) production, as is the case for nuclear and other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, to produce such armaments. Controlling the proliferation of new means of destruction may turn out to be a very complicated task.
his chapter is devoted to discussing achievements in and predictions related to rapidly developing fields of science and technology, such as nanotechnology, robotics and genetic engineering.
Nanotechnology
Nanorobots are hypothetical machines with sizes as small as several hundred nanometers (the prefix
"nano" comes from the Greek word nanos, meaning "dwarf"; 1 nanometer is 10-9 m), the development of which has recently started. (For comparison, a the diameter of a human hair is 80,000 nanometers and the size of modern microchips is tens of nanometers). Like ordinary robots, nanorobots will be of various designs and have different spheres of application, being able to move, performing mechanical and other types of op-erations and being controlled either remotely or with the help of a built-in microprocessor. Nanorobots will be particularly useful for the creation of new substances and assemblage of sophisticated mechanisms, this type of robots being referred to as "assemblers" or "replicators." Nanorobots can also be programmed for utilization or elimination of hazardous materials. The ultimate success in this area would be the creation of nanorobots capable of making copies of themselves, i.e., capable of reproduction. It is believed that in this century nanotechnologies may create a revolution similar in scale and significance to the one created by com-puters in the field of information in the 20th century.
The idea that matter can be controlled on the submolecular level was first expressed back in 1959 by Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman. Later, in the 1980s, devices came into being capable of handling a single atom;
for example, they could literally take an atom and move it to a new location. Thus, for example, there has been a segmented, swinging mechanism made of several DNA chains that was chemically controlled and could bend back and forth, as well as were nanotransistors of only a few atoms. Specialists in the area have learned to write the names and logos of companies using atoms instead of paint. One of the newest directions of work is the construction of nanotubes1. Nanotechnology is receiving huge investments, and many companies are involved2.
Nanorobots could work inside human organisms to clear them of cancer cells or cholesterol plaques, deliver medicines precisely to where they are needed, they could be programmed to analyze and correct flaws in cells and tissues, monitor tear and wear of the organs and do regular maintenance and service. While working on the restoration of damaged tissues, nanorobots could erect 'nanoscaffolds' of nanofibers that would dissolve after the work is complete. There are reasons to hope that such organism-restoration technologies will be put to use already in the foreseeable future. As DNA replicates itself using simple molecules from a nutrient solution as building material, nanorobots would be able to make copies of themselves or other objects according to a pro-gram. Almost anything could be used as raw material, from fallen leaves to sea water, the nanorobot using its own intelligence to find what it needs and use it appropriately. They will reproduce, grow, learn and perform other functions, needing only the appropriate software and the simplest building materials. The major problems
1 Carbon nanotubes are cylindrical structures, ten or several tens of nanometers in diameter and up to several centimeters in length. Their spe-cific conductivity is comparable with that of metals while they can support current densities an order of magnitude higher than metals can.
Schematic view of a nanotube.
2 The US Congress has allocated nearly $4 billion (in addition to private investments) to finance nanotechnology projects for the next four years.
Russia has also announced a national five-year program in this area beginning in 2007, with a budget of over $1 billion. It is believed that nanotechnologies will open new horizons everywhere, from agriculture to space research. It is predicted that products fabricated with the use of nanotechnology would sell around $1 trillion annually by 2010.
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and cost will be related to their design and software development, which may take quite a time. There is a lot in common between such robots and living organisms: They reproduce, grow, give birth to new generations – all thanks to their program and out of the available materials – food, water, heat and air4.
It is well known that all objects in the Universe are com-posed of atoms (such as carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, etc.); it is the order in which these atoms are organized and connected to each other that determines the matter's type and proper-ties. In other words, the diversity of nature stems from the diversity of atomic combinations. By changing the order of atoms nature creates various substances. It would be ex-tremely tempting to master the technique of changing atomic arrangement. If we manage that we will be able to get everything we could wish from simple and cheap materials.
Now mankind is at the doorstep of a breakthrough that is without a precedent in the history of human civilization.
These tiny machines (or creatures?), nanorobots, can be easily transported over long distances in the form of dust clouds or like locusts, and can be used for both peaceful (like cleaning our planet of pollutants) and de-structive purposes5. During the development and
fabri-cation of new materials such important mechanical properties as hardness, strength, plasticity and yield point can improve drastically when we shift from macro- to microscopic objects. It may be possible to teach nanoro-bots to produce foods, and we will no longer need to grow plants or breed animals, or to assemble huge me-chanical structures under a program and using prescribed materials.
Much success has already been achieved on the way of microminiaturization. Microscopic medical instru-ments have found application in surgery, and serially produced microscopic actuators, sensors and other micro-mechanisms are widely employed in many areas. Doctors will soon begin using special diagnostic micropills with miniature cameras that will take hundreds of photographs inside a patient's body. Robots capable of coordinated activity, i.e., working as a team, are expected to appear soon6. In the future, nanotechnology is poised to make a breakthrough to making devices with sizes on the atomic scale7.
However, as happens all too often, scientific breakthroughs may have negative consequences. Let us imagine a situation in which a malfunction occurs in a system designed for industrial waste disposal and the system begins to destroy useful substances in the biosphere that are essential for human life. A nanorobot's ability to self-replicate may be particularly dangerous in such a situation. Self-replicating nanorobots that have been deliberately pro-grammed for destruction or have spun out of control due to a program glitch or malfunction may become a very real threat to life on the planet. For example, nanorobots programmed to destroy protein organisms will turn the Earth's biosphere into a lifeless mass of nanomachines, a gray goo. Substances detrimental for the human organ-ism, such as sterilizing agents, may also possibly be fabricated, and their intentional or accidental release might have grave consequences. Nanotechnologies may also lead to the creation of selective weapons targeted at certain ethnic groups or geographical areas.
Massive application of such weapons would not even require sophisticated production facilities or large financial allocations. A single device will be self-sufficient and have the potential to reproduce and perfect itself according to
3 Prizes have been instituted for the creation of a nanorobot's hand and a nanocomputer. The 'hand' should be not bigger than 100 cubic nanome-ters in volume and should perform controlled displacement and mating of molecules and atoms. The 'nanocomputer' should be less than 50 cubic nanometers in volume and has sufficient calculating power for summation of any pairs of 8-bit binary numbers.
4 During cell division in plant or animal tissues molecules are taken from out of Brownian chaos and set in place within the double helix and the DNA under construction is bombarded by molecules, each waiting for its turn to be set in its proper location. It is even possible to say that every living cell is a nanorobot, with its DNA being the controlling computer. Such amazingly complicated self-organization engineered by the nature and present in the millions of plant and animal species cannot but arouse admiration, especially given that it appeared at the very start of evolu-tion, at the moment when dead matter turned into living matter.
5 The following is an excerpt from English philosopher Nick Bostrom: "Nanotechnology would enable the construction of self-replicating ma-chines on the molecular scale, a kind of mechanical bacteria, that could feed on organic matter and cause the extinction of intelligent life on Earth. Technology of creating destructive nanorobots appears to be simpler than that of creating effective protection from such nanoattacks – kind of a global-scale nano-immune system. Each side will be tempted to deal the fist strike."
6 Work is currently in progress on developing such devices. With modern technologies, it will be possible to make them of the size of a tennis ball, and they may be very useful for applications in space, for example, exploring caves on Mars.
7 Nanocrystalline coatings are already applied onto critical structures to enhance their thermal resistance, durability and other important properties. Car-bon tubes (carCar-bon nanotubes) – a nanometer wide and several dozens of micrometers long have been created that are remarkable in that their electrical conductivity is two orders of magnitude higher than that of copper. It is interesting to note that nanostructures sometimes unexpectedly display self-organization properties. Such properties, in combination with their miniature dimensions, make nanostructures reminiscent of organic substances.
Nanotechnologies open new horizons for information systems as well. For example, data storage on an atomic level will allow storage capacity to be increased by several orders of magnitude.
a program. In the event of a leak of the relevant knowledge, a small group of people or even a lone terrorist would be able to produce and launch a killer device.
Robotics. Artificial Intelligence
"Intelligent machines" are a rapidly developing industry. In the next few decades, computers are predicted to become millions of times more powerful than they are today. It will then be possible to make machines that are more effective than people in most kinds of mental work, and it will be logical to use them to resolve the most challenging problems in the economy, politics, social sphere and many other fields.
Many critical tasks in science, defense and other important areas are already assigned to machines, and there are many full-cycle pro-ductions serviced by a few workers. A good example is the automo-bile industry. Home service robots are also undergoing quick mod-ernization. The latest models of household robots boast spatial orien-tation and obstacle avoidance and are voice controlled, some even having facial expressions8. Robots outwardly resembling humans, i.e., with two feet and two hands, walking and doing things in a "human"
manner, are in the process of being designed. Competitive races of robots are no longer a novelty. Robotic sur-gical assistants are capable of taking a surgeon's instructions given orally during operation and give required in-struments to him or her9. Another remarkable achievement in this field is Cyberhand, a new-generation pros-thetic device. Patients equipped with such a device will actually be able to feel what they are doing. Teaching robots and other sophisticated appliances are not far off. Plans call for bringing robots up to a level sufficient to support full-fledged man-robot communication by 202510.
The progress in robotic engineering and automated production confirms that the present-day level of science and technology is sufficient to support well-being for all people on the planet. All that is needed is to disseminate the knowledge and know-how and overcome the contradictions between various communities and groups of peo-ple. Of course, depletion of the Earth resources of the Earth is a serious problem, but there is a huge field still waiting to be plowed – outer space. We will return to this subject and discuss it again in greater detail in the final chapters of the book.
The problem of creating artificial intelligence essentially boils down to formalizing the process of cognition11. After all, it is both cheaper and safer to use robots for exploring difficult-to-access areas on the Earth as well as is outer space. The number of applications in which robots can be more effective than human beings is con-stantly increasing. It appears quite paradoxical that the human brain, the product of a hundred million years of evolution, is now creating machines capable of doing sophisticated mental work much faster, and often much better, than do human beings. Moreover, such intellectual machines have taken only a few decades to be de-signed and produced12.
8 There are more than 70 known projects devoted to creating anthropomorphic robots, that is, androids. It is believed that by the middle of this century human beings will have no chance in a game of soccer played against a team of such machines.
9 Robots will be getting more affordable to consumers, and they will be having increasing influence on our work, studies, pastimes and commu-nications, like it happened with personal computers over the last 30 years, Bill Gates forecasts.
10 In Japan, where deficit of manpower is forecast, there are plans of wide use of robots. By year 2025, they plan to use about 970,000 robots as nurses and sick attendants, another 450,000 robots in agriculture and 1.5 million robots as janitors and couriers.
11 It is important to include perceptual analysis, the path from the particular to the general. Perceiving a new object as a combination of signals generated by its sensors, a computer will make a hypothesis about what it is, then analyzing the hypothesis and either proving or disproving it.
12 The following is an excerpt from Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, 2005: "Man is losing his central position as the most intelligent and
efficient creature of the Earth. A bit earlier than in 2099 we will be able to scan human brain and record each combination of neurons, neuro-transmitters, each synaptic connection and each cell in full detail. Having done that, we will be able to copy human brain into a strong computer to make an ideal copy of thoughts, recollections and all what we can do." (http://www.automatesintelligents.com/). Hence there will be a chance to replace defective segments of human brain with microcircuits, and, therefore, return vision to the blind, hearting to the deaf and ability to move to the paralyzed. Kurzweil further wrote: "Synergy and progressive development of new technologies will result in a fundamental transformation of the world. What will happen will be a mutual penetration and mutual strengthening of Man and his technological resources. It will expand the realm of intelligent life beyond any conceivable bounds. Our intelligence will gradually break free from its biological vessel (the brain) and will be-come billion times mightier compared to what it is today. In the new world that be-comes, distinctions between man and machine and between actual and virtual reality will gradually disappear. People will be able to get new bodies and create several versions of their consciousness. With such abilities, people will put diseases and aging under control, clean the environment and resolve the problems of hunger and poverty world-wide. All this might come true in the next 10-50 years."
Computer Evolution
It is no coincidence that beat the world chess champion. With progress in hardware and software, it will be increasingly difficult for human beings to stand up in competition with machines. It is obvious that the compa-nies and countries that outrace others in delegating control to the machines will have an advantage. It is difficult to make far-reaching forecasts at this point, but in the final analysis human beings will likely face the problem of keeping its machines under control.
Here it is appropriate to recall the famous Three Laws of Robotics of Isaac Asimov's science-fiction stories: "1.
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law." Of course, it is not a problem to keep your desktop computer, laptop under control – but what about the powerful machines that control production, energy, requisition, defense and other critical areas? Efficient command requires delegation of decision-making authority to subordinates. The problem is that it may become impossible for an in-telligent machine to explain its decision-making motives to a human operator who might be less inin-telligent and less competent. What if a situation occurs in which a decision needs to be made very quickly? In both market competi-tion and warfare, it will be logical to delegate maximum authority to artificial intelligence systems after bringing their capacity up to a maximum and providing them with the greatest possible degree of protection.
All we can do at this point is speculate about possible trends and future scenarios. Probably the best outcome would be a carefree existence for the human species with intelligent machines working under their control.
Thus, machines would provide people with everything necessary for life and save them time for creative work in the sciences and arts, as well as for sports, travel and entertainment. The danger is that one day the machines may decide to play their own game for goals not coinciding with those of people. Nobody knows how a self-learning and self-reproducing artificial intelligence will behave. Such robots might, for example, come to want to increase their self-reproduction and seek to use as many resources as possible for this purpose. The capacity for quick self-reproduction might become particularly important in the event of a war between different groups of people and/or computers. At a certain moment, the question may arise of which deserves more resources, peo-ple or machines.
In a different scenario, control of the machines might be usurped by a small group of people. Then, this group will have the power to decide what to do with the others, whether to let them live or leave them to die. There is no
In a different scenario, control of the machines might be usurped by a small group of people. Then, this group will have the power to decide what to do with the others, whether to let them live or leave them to die. There is no