Contained xRisk Demonstrations

[JohnHunt]

Nanotech, chemtech, biotech, and AI existential risks (xRisks) are not being taken seriously enough. Each area is undergoing rapid development and it is reasonable to expect that any of these areas will achieve self-replicating ability by mid-century. The risks are very real and threaten everything that we hold dear (our lives, our families, the future of humanity).

As with many other areas, these issues are known but do not raise sufficient concern until something bad happens. Then suddenly there is a great deal of concern and action. e.g. the goals of Al Qaeda were well known before 9-11 but it took that huge catastrophy to, among other things, stop letting young Saudi men come into the U.S. and learn how to fly jumbo jets! The problem is, with xRisks our first event may be our last and it will be too late to do anything about it.

To raise the level of alarm and generate appropriate action, a contained demonstration of an existential or near-existential risk should be conducted. Just the knowledge that someone was trying to openly develop an xRisk might produce the desired reaction. But if not, then the news reports that scientists have just demonstrated the capability of causing the extinction of a certain species should likely cause governments to take xRisks seriously.

Containment could include Level-4 biocontainment, a similar containment for self-replicating ecophagic chemical or nanobot, and an off-line, off power grid attempt at producing self-improving AI.

[Boxy]

I don't know. I'm rather a skeptic myself, and I would need a little more concrete proof that any of these (or any of these in conjunction) are legitimate threats to the well-being of humanity and/or biological life. So far all I've seen is speculation and saber-rattling. Of course, absence of proof is not proof of absence, but the scientific thing to do is actually study the potential for catastrophic danger that these technologies (and others, I reckon) prove dangerous.

All of this just proves how truly and profoundly fragile life is, and how long it took to develop in the first place. However, I have questions as to how harmful nanolife would be if their composition is different from organic life (i.e. silicon versus carbon as building-blocks), and whether nanolife wouldn't simply fill a brand new ecological niche. If nanolife focuses on organics, they still have to compete with the firmly-entrenched DNA operating system.

Again, I'm a skeptic, so you might not agree with the value judgments that are made in this debate. However, the fact that there are critiques to the critiques means that you can refine your argument :D

[JohnHunt]

Hi Boxy,

No problem. The point of forums are to challenge each other's ideas so that we all can refine them.

> I would need a little more concrete proof

We don't have a self-replicating nanobot yet. Would you therefore not think the idea likely until you see the first example or is there lesser concrete proof that you would accept? If I point you to specific experiments or peer-reviewed articles of expert's speculation, would you accept either of those as concrete proof or just more speculation and saber-rattling?

Now I see that you saw my post in the Links re: Life As We Know It Nearly Created in Lab and you acknowledge it to be fascinating. So I would say that this is not proof positive but still evidence that the idea of someone in a lab producing self-replicating chemicals is a real possibility.

Now, I could use your help here. Chemical reactions can "go to completion" meaning that they use up all of a certain reactant. So, say we were to produce a self-replicating chemical that used CO2 and several other readily available reactants. If CO2 was the limiting reactant (i.e. not rate limiting but rather it would be the first reactant to run out) and if the end product (i.e. the self-replicating chemical) didn't readily react back to the original dissociated reactants, then wouldn't you expect that such a chemical would consume all of the available CO2 in the atmosphere and result in ecophagy and the end of life as we know it? If so, then why don't microbes ever do something like this? Why do they always stop short of consuming some necessary reactant?