Machines that Reproduce

�Self-replication "is essential to nano-technology. We want to build one tiny machine that will go forth and replicate -- but not multiply ad infinitum."



Can machines reproduce? More importantly, perhaps -- should they be allowed to?

�To prove their point, the researchers have created a primordial soup that works like a digital DNA factory, where T-shaped "codons" swim in a computer-generated virtual liquid forming single, double, and even triple strands.�

�Like DNA, these digital particles "can be assembled into patterns that encode" information, claims robotics scientist Peter Turney in a new paper. For the first time ever, "we demonstrate that, if an arbitrary seed pattern is put in a soup of separate individual particles, the pattern will replicate by assembling the individual particles into copies of itself."

The Article

I can see a lot of useful applications for this technology, but I can also see some terrible consequences from it�s misuse. If we have learned one thing from technology it�s that given enough time it will ultimately be used for good and evil. I could be used to clean the oceans pollution on a global scale. I could also be used to kill. This could be like a super virus that enters the body self replicates and ends up killing every animal on earth if we aren�t careful. Once it starts nobody could stop it.

They're machines. Machine's can't and shouldn't be allowed to reproduce. I think it would be really weird if they could. Imagine all the machine mothers living in poverty because their baby's daddy left them. That would be terrible.

Currently machines require human to keep them functioning. When they no longer need our help to exist, and AI gets to the point they discover they are subserviant to us, how do you think they will react? It definately wont be well, thats for sure. Add to that the ability for machines to increate their numbers at their own will, and you have the beginnings of a new kind of war along the lines of Terminator. The more I see technological "advances" like this, it makes me realize our technology will eventually be our doom in the end.

The idea is to use nano-tech to help repair the human body, by injecting maybe just one nano-machine and allowing it to replicate on certain chemicals being fed into the body to do a repair job. Obviously there is the 'grey-goo' idea behind this, but scientists dismiss this as silly at the least.

You may want to read 'prey' though, I have and it's a good book.

The problem is that here you are linking AI and self-replication together..
Self-replication does not require AI to function.

AI imho would be controllable if you put it onto a regular computer at the moment without any form of internet etc connection
to deny it the ability to 'pass itself over' and "self-replicate" on THE INTERNET (not physically) then it will be contained.

See terminator 3, SkyNet replicates over the internet.

That would not be good if they could reproduce. I would be afraid and move to the moon. If they reproduce they might kill us all and that would NOT be fun.

IF you believe what was earlier said in here, then they could technically get to the moon as well?

Fancy that, all of civilization being wiped out by computers.

I think AI is pretty much impossible, We may be able to create a level of intelligence which can act also humanly, but I dont think that we will ever be able to create something which can develop and create it's own programs without some human programmer helping to guide it in some form.


EDIT: Anyway, how do you ask a robot how it feels if it doesnt feel emotions or sensory things?


[Edited on 22-2-2004 by browha]

If this new kind of DNA contains all the information for the machine to replicate, wouldn't it have the ability to evolve like other life forms? Isn't the AI built into the DNA?

[Edited on 22-2-2004 by kinglizard]

The Basic Process of Evolution

The basic theory of evolution is surprisingly simple. It has three essential parts:

It is possible for the DNA of an organism to occasionally change, or mutate. A mutation changes the DNA of an organism in a way that affects its offspring, either immediately or several generations down the line.

The change brought about by a mutation is either beneficial, harmful or neutral. If the change is harmful, then it is unlikely that the offspring will survive to reproduce, so the mutation dies out and goes nowhere. If the change is beneficial, then it is likely that the offspring will do better than other offspring and so will reproduce more. Through reproduction, the beneficial mutation spreads. The process of culling bad mutations and spreading good mutations is called natural selection.

As mutations occur and spread over long periods of time, they cause new species to form. Over the course of many millions of years, the processes of mutation and natural selection have created every species of life that we see in the world today, from the simplest bacteria to humans and everything in between.

Nothing should be allowed to reproduce without some checks and balances on it. This is annother journey down a rocky path for humanity.

I agree Theneo, Our own technology could be the thing that brings on the end of the human race.

I wholeheartedly agree, virus and bacteria have killed more humans than all other causes combined and modern medicine is barely keeping them in check - soon we could experience nanotech gone wild (from weaponization), rampently killing off humans with no defence what so ever.
Its pandoras box to me.

Yeah, Assuming the nano machine enters the body our immune system would have zero effect.

The essence of making nanotech a viable device that can work out of the lab scares the # out of me. The only way this can be done is to copy the cellular funtioning of living organisms - therein lies the danger.

With no known predator to limit it or kill it, nanotech could and would multiply unchecked until another device was made to prey on it and so on ad infintum.

The effect of that scenario depends on what the designers intended the nanotech to use for energy and construction material to replicate.

The question becomes "can humans survive this onslaught" if weaponized versions were introduced to the enviroment - I view it much like an ICBM, once launched you can't recall them.

It seems to me that if it knows how to replicate itself, it needs to pass on that knowledge on to the next generation and that is what makes evolution possible. With mutation a nano machine intended to clean the ocean could evolve into something that was not intended. I don�t see how you could control it after it was released.

The problem here is that you are making a false link between AI and nano-tech.
These things dont run around with consciences saying let's blow up the world.
They are designed to do one specific job. If someone designed them to destroy the world, they will.

they arent able to 'pass on that knowledge to the next generation'.

The knowledge I�m referring to is encoded on the DNA. The DNA would tell the machine how to create another machine, when to create it and how it should operate. Not that it would evolve because of natural selection but that that the DNA it passed on could be damaged or decay, in that way the next generation would be slightly different than the original. This happens again and again and again and the ones who survive would have evolved into something different then intended.

Yeah but that would take literally millions of years, and you are assuming that we will build nano tech that requires DNA, currently there is no need to include DNA unless I am missing something really big

Machines that Reproduce May be Reality

cough cough...terminator...cough cough

the idea of machines being able to reproduce would mean that something living can come from something nonliving, in a sense, completely against the cell theory (every cell comes from another cell)

unless we somehow breathe life into these machines, they will not be able to reproduce more than perhaps being robots in an assembly line.

and if we could breathe life into these machines, WTF?!?!?!?!?