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Authors: Ray Kurzweil
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BOOK: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
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Of course, the notion of completely rebuilding our bodies with synthetic materials, even if superior in certain ways, is not immediately compelling. We like the softness of our bodies. We like bodies to be supple and cuddly and warm. And not a superficial warmth, but the deep and intimate heat drawn from its trillions of living cells.
So let’s consider enhancing our bodies cell by cell. We have started down that road as well. We have written down a portion of the entire genetic code that describes our cells, and we’ve started the process of understanding it. In the near future, we hope to design genetic therapies to improve our cells, to correct such defects as the insulin resistance associated with Type II diabetes, and the loss of control over self-replication associated with cancer. An early method of delivering gene therapies was to infect a patient with special viruses containing the corrective DNA. A more effective method developed by Dr. Clifford Steer at the University of Minnesota utilizes RNA molecules to deliver the desired DNA directly.
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High on researchers’ list for future cellular improvements through genetic engineering is to counteract our genes for cellular suicide. These strands of genetic beads, called telomeres, get shorter every time a cell divides. When the telomere beads count down to zero, a cell is no longer able to divide, and destroys itself. There’s a long list of diseases, aging conditions, and limitations that we intend to address by altering the genetic code that controls our cells.
2
High on researchers’ list for future cellular improvements through genetic engineering is to counteract our genes for cellular suicide. These strands of genetic beads, called telomeres, get shorter every time a cell divides. When the telomere beads count down to zero, a cell is no longer able to divide, and destroys itself. There’s a long list of diseases, aging conditions, and limitations that we intend to address by altering the genetic code that controls our cells.
But there is only so far we can go with this approach. Our DNA-based cells depend on protein synthesis, and while protein is a marvelously diverse substance, it suffers from severe limitations. Hans Moravec, one of the first serious thinkers to realize the potential of twenty-first-century machines, points out that “protein is not an ideal material. It is stable only in a narrow temperature and pressure range, is very sensitive to radiation, and rules out many construction techniques and components.... A genetically engineered superhuman would be just a second-rate kind of robot, designed under the handicap that its construction can only be by DNA-guided protein synthesis. Only in the eyes of human chauvinists would it have an advantage.”
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One of evolution’s ideas that is worth keeping, however, is building our bodies from cells. This approach would retain many of our bodies’ beneficial qualities: redundancy, which provides a high degree of reliability; the ability to regenerate and repair itself; and softness and warmth. But just as we will eventually relinquish the extremely slow speed of our neurons, we will ultimately be forced to abandon the other restrictions of our protein-based chemistry. To rein-vent our cells, we look to one of the twenty-first century’s primary technologies:
nanotechnology.
NANOTECHNOLOGY: REBUILDING THE WORLD, ATOM BY ATOMnanotechnology.
The problems of chemistry and biology can be greatly helped if... doing things on an atomic level is ultimately developed
—
a development which I think cannot be avoided.
—Richard Feynman, 1959
Suppose someone claimed to have a microscopically exact replica (in marble, even) of Michelangelo’s David in his home. When you go to see this marvel, you find a twenty-foot-tall, roughly rectilinear hunk of pure white marble standing in his living room. “I haven’t gotten around to unpacking it yet,” he says, “but I know it’s in there.”
—Douglas Hofstadter
What advantages will nanotoasters have over conventional macroscopic toaster technology? First, the savings in counter space will be substantial. One philosophical point that must not be overlooked is that the creation of the world’s smallest toaster implies the existence of the world’s smallest slice of bread. In the quantum limit we must necessarily encounter fundamental toast particles, which we designate here as “croutons.”
—Jim Cser, Annals of Improbable Research, edited by Marc Abrahams
Humankind’s first tools were found objects: sticks used to dig up roots and stones used to break open nuts. It took our forebears tens of thousands of years to invent a sharp blade. Today we build machines with finely designed intricate mechanisms, but viewed on an atomic scale, our technology is still crude. “Casting, grinding, milling, and even lithography move atoms in great thundering statistical herds,” says Ralph Merkle, a leading nanotechnology theorist at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center. He adds that current manufacturing methods are “like trying to make things out of Legos with boxing gloves on.... In the future, nanotechnology will let us take off the boxing gloves.”
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Nanotechnology is technology built on the atomic level: building machines one atom at a time. “Nano” refers to a billionth of a meter, which is the width of five carbon atoms. We have one existence proof of the feasibility of nanotechnology: life on Earth. Little machines in our cells called ribosomes build organisms such as humans one molecule, that is one amino acid, at a time, following digital templates coded in another molecule called DNA. Life on Earth has mastered the ultimate goal of nanotechnology, which is self-replication.
But as mentioned above, Earthly life is limited by the particular molecular building block it has selected. Just as our human-created computational technology will ultimately exceed the capacity of natural computation (electronic circuits are already millions of times faster than human neural circuits), our twenty-first-century physical technology will also greatly exceed the capabilities of the amino acid—based nanotechnology of the natural world.
The concept of building machines atom by atom was first described in a 1959 talk at Cal Tech titled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” by physicist Richard Feynman, the same guy who first suggested the possibility of quantum computing.
5
The idea was developed in some detail by Eric Drexler twenty years later in his book Engines of
Creation.
6
The book actually inspired the cryonics movement of the 1980s, in which people had their heads (with or without bodies) frozen in the hope that a future time would possess the molecule-scale technology to overcome their mortal diseases, as well as undo the effects of freezing and defrosting. Whether a future generation would be motivated to revive all these frozen brains was another matter.
5
The idea was developed in some detail by Eric Drexler twenty years later in his book Engines of
Creation.
6
The book actually inspired the cryonics movement of the 1980s, in which people had their heads (with or without bodies) frozen in the hope that a future time would possess the molecule-scale technology to overcome their mortal diseases, as well as undo the effects of freezing and defrosting. Whether a future generation would be motivated to revive all these frozen brains was another matter.
After publication of
Engines of Creation,
the response to Drexler’s ideas was skeptical and he had difficulty filling out his MIT Ph.D. committee despite Marvin Minsky’s agreement to supervise it. Drexler’s dissertation, published in 1992 as a book titled
Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation,
provided a comprehensive proof of concept, including detailed analyses and specific designs.
7
A year later, the first nanotechnology conference attracted only a few dozen researchers. The fifth annual conference, held in December 1997, boasted 350 scientists who were far more confident of the practicality of their tiny projects. Nanothinc, an industry think tank, estimated in 1997 that the field already produces $5 billion in annual revenues for nanotechnology-related technologies, including micromachines, microfabrication techniques, nanolithography, nanoscale microscopes, and others. This figure has been more than doubling each year.
8
The Age of NanotubesEngines of Creation,
the response to Drexler’s ideas was skeptical and he had difficulty filling out his MIT Ph.D. committee despite Marvin Minsky’s agreement to supervise it. Drexler’s dissertation, published in 1992 as a book titled
Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation,
provided a comprehensive proof of concept, including detailed analyses and specific designs.
7
A year later, the first nanotechnology conference attracted only a few dozen researchers. The fifth annual conference, held in December 1997, boasted 350 scientists who were far more confident of the practicality of their tiny projects. Nanothinc, an industry think tank, estimated in 1997 that the field already produces $5 billion in annual revenues for nanotechnology-related technologies, including micromachines, microfabrication techniques, nanolithography, nanoscale microscopes, and others. This figure has been more than doubling each year.
8
One key building material for tiny machines is, again, nanotubes. Although built on an atomic scale, the hexagonal patterns of carbon atoms are extremely strong and durable. “You can do anything you damn well want with these tubes and they’ll just keep on truckin’,” says Richard Smalley, one of the chemists who received the Nobel Prize for discovering the buckyball molecule.
9
A car made of nanotubes would be stronger and more stable than a car made with steel, but would weigh only fifty pounds. A spacecraft made of nanotubes could be of the size and strength of the U.S. space shuttle, but weigh no more than a conventional car. Nanotubes handle heat extremely well, far better than the fragile amino acids that people are built out of. They can be assembled into all kinds of shapes: wirelike strands, sturdy girders, gears, etcetera. Nanotubes are formed of carbon atoms, which are in plentiful supply in the natural world.
9
A car made of nanotubes would be stronger and more stable than a car made with steel, but would weigh only fifty pounds. A spacecraft made of nanotubes could be of the size and strength of the U.S. space shuttle, but weigh no more than a conventional car. Nanotubes handle heat extremely well, far better than the fragile amino acids that people are built out of. They can be assembled into all kinds of shapes: wirelike strands, sturdy girders, gears, etcetera. Nanotubes are formed of carbon atoms, which are in plentiful supply in the natural world.
As I mentioned earlier, the same nanotubes can be used for extremely efficient computation, so both the structural and computational technology of the twenty-first century will likely be constructed from the same stuff. In fact, the same nanotubes used to form physical structures can also be used for computation, so future nanomachines can have their brains distributed throughout their bodies.
The best-known examples of nanotechnology to date, while not altogether practical, are beginning to show the feasibility of engineering at the atomic level. IBM created its corporate logo using individual atoms as pixels.
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In 1996, Texas Instruments built a chip-sized device with half a million moveable mirrors to be used in a tiny high-resolution projector.
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TI sold $100 million worth of their nanomirrors in 1997.
10
In 1996, Texas Instruments built a chip-sized device with half a million moveable mirrors to be used in a tiny high-resolution projector.
11
TI sold $100 million worth of their nanomirrors in 1997.
Chih-Ming Ho of UCLA is designing flying machines using surfaces covered with microflaps that control the flow of air in a similar manner to conventional flaps on a normal airplane.
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Andrew Berlin at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center is designing a printer using microscopic air valves to move paper documents precisely.
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Andrew Berlin at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center is designing a printer using microscopic air valves to move paper documents precisely.
13
Cornell graduate student and rock musician Dustin Carr built a realistic-looking but microscopic guitar with strings only fifty nanometers in diameter. Carr’s creation is a fully functional musical instrument, but his fingers are too large to play it. Besides, the strings vibrate at 10 million vibrations per second, far beyond the twenty-thousand-cycles-per-second limit of human hearing.
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The Holy Grail of Self-Replication: Little Fingers and a Little Intelligence14
Tiny fingers represent something of a holy grail for nanotechnologists. With little fingers and computation, nanomachines would have in their Lilliputian world what people have in the big world: intelligence and the ability to manipulate their environment. Then these little machines could build replicas of themselves, achieving the field’s key objective.
The reason that self-replication is important is that it is too expensive to build these tiny machines one at a time. To be effective, nanometer-sized machines need to come in the trillions. The only way to achieve this economically is through combinatorial explosion: let the machines build themselves.
Drexler, Merkle (a coinventor of public key encryption, the primary method of encrypting messages), and others have convincingly described how such a self-replicating nanorobot—
nanobot
—could be constructed. The trick is to provide the nanobot with sufficiently flexible manipulators—arms and hands—so that it is capable of building a copy of itself. It needs some means for mobility so that it can find the requisite raw materials. It requires some intelligence so that it can solve the little problems that will arise when each nanobot goes about building a complicated little machine like itself. Finally, a
really important requirement is that it needs to know when to stop replicating.
Morphing in the Real Worldnanobot
—could be constructed. The trick is to provide the nanobot with sufficiently flexible manipulators—arms and hands—so that it is capable of building a copy of itself. It needs some means for mobility so that it can find the requisite raw materials. It requires some intelligence so that it can solve the little problems that will arise when each nanobot goes about building a complicated little machine like itself. Finally, a
really important requirement is that it needs to know when to stop replicating.
Self-replicating machines built at the atomic level could truly transform the world we live in. They could build extremely inexpensive solar cells, allowing the replacement of messy fossil fuels. Since solar cells require a large surface area to collect sufficient sunlight, they could be placed in orbit, with the energy beamed down to Earth.
Nanobots launched into our bloodstreams could supplement our natural immune system and seek out and destroy pathogens, cancer cells, arterial plaque, and other disease agents. In the vision that inspired the cryonics enthusiasts, diseased organs can be rebuilt. We will be able to reconstruct any or all of our bodily organs and systems, and do so at the cellular level. I talked in the last chapter about reverse engineering and emulating the salient computational functionality of human neurons. In the same way, it will become possible to reverse engineer and replicate the physical and chemical functionality of any human cell. In the process we will be in a position to greatly extend the durability, strength, temperature range, and other qualities and capabilities of our cellular building blocks.
We will then be able to grow stronger, more capable organs by redesigning the cells that constitute them and building them with far more versatile and durable materials. As we go down this road, we’ll find that some redesign of the body makes sense at multiple levels. For example, if our cells are no longer vulnerable to the conventional pathogens, we may not need the same kind of immune system. But we will need new nanoengineered protections for a new assortment of nanopathogens.
Food, clothing, diamond rings, buildings could all assemble themselves molecule by molecule. Any sort of product could be instantly created when and where we need it. Indeed, the world could continually reassemble itself to meet our changing needs, desires; and fantasies. By the late twenty-first century, nanotechnology will permit objects such as furniture, buildings, clothing, even people,. to change their appearance and other characteristics—essentially to change into something else—in a split second.
BOOK: The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence
11.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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