Re: Nanobots Not Needed

From: Chris Phoenix (cphoenixNOSPAM_at_crnano.org)
Date: 03/08/05 

Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 18:55:40 -0000

John S. Novak, III wrote:
> In article <d08gdc01923@enews4.newsguy.com>, Mike Treder, CRN wrote:
>
> Um. One hates to come off sounding rude or snarky, but... is this the
> whole document?

Yes, it's the whole document.

You do come off sounding rude and snarky. Let's see if I can answer
without sounding defensive.

> I will accept the assertion that most people do not, in fact, know the
> difference between those terms. However, a footnote to the studies
> referenced would make this rather more persuasive.

I was thinking of two general nanotech studies, one in the US and one in
Britain, showing that many people still have never heard of nanotech,
and many of those who have can't give any kind of definition. I don't
have the references handy, but they've been in the news.

> More importantly than either of those two criticisms, is the final
> assertion-- that this confusion somehow might hinder research. There's
> a clever shift of the pen there from (explicitly) "most people" to
> (implicitly) people doing actual research. I'm pretty sure that the
> researchers and the layer or two of pocketbook holders are a little
> more clued in on those terms than the average everyman on the street.
> Very few people write seven or eight digit checks on a whim.

I was not saying that researchers might be confused, but that popular
confusiong might do political damage that could hurt research.

I'm not so sure that funders aren't confused. Some of them don't know
what molecular manufacturing is about--they just know that they're
opposed to Drexler.

In any case, there was no shift of the pen.

> .... So would a good scientific survey of just
> exactly what "advanced nanotechnology research" actually is.
>
> Instead, what we get is a footnote with boilerplate about
> nanotechnology and millionths of meters, without any support for the
> claims being made. What this does, in effect, is presumptively-- even
> presumptuously-- define everyone working on something other than this
> paper's preferred course of research to be something other than the
> actual goal of advanced nano.

Well, from one point of view, everyone doing scientific research into
nanotech is doing "advanced" work. That's not how I meant it. I think
a reasonable definition for advanced nanotech (in the absence of any
formal definition for a non-technical phrase) is the ability to build
precise molecular structures incorporating terabytes of blueprints. I
don't see any way to do that other than molecular manufacturing. This
is going out on a limb a bit, so feel free to suggest technical
alternatives.

>>Studies have shown that most readers don't know the difference between
>>molecular manufacturing, nanoscale technology, and nanobots. Most
>>nanoscale technologies use big machines to make small products.
>>Molecular manufacturing is about tiny manufacturing systems. But those
>>manufacturing systems are not nanobots.[3] Modern plans for molecular
>>manufacturing do not involve self-contained nanoscale construction
>>robots at all.
>
> Again, cite the studies. If there's anything that gets up my nose,
> it's unsubstantiated claims which are repeated like sledgehammer
> blows. What studies? Cite them. How were they conducted? Who
> conducted them? You are dedicating an entire essay to the refutation
> of these claims-- the reader deserves the opportunity to see them.

Sorry it got up your nose. In the original version, the formatting made
it clear that the first paragraph was a summary of the rest of the
document, so the claim was not repeated, just restated.

It was not written as an academic paper, and I tried to avoid dull
phrasing; if you were expecting academic work with footnotes, then you
may have seen the style as "sledgehammer blows." Sorry.

> Also, be very, very careful about absolute claims. Your footnote here
> is useful, in that it prevented me from bringing up the numerous
> possible uses for nanobots (e.g., medical, which you note;
> micromaintenance; sensing and monitoring; and other infrastructure
> uses.) But is also contained the absolute statement that *no*
> credible researchers are planning nanobots where are either
> metabolising or self-reproducing.
>
> And yet, I am presently reading a book chapter (found online at:
> http://www.bionano.neu.edu/Nanorobotics.pdf ) which very clearly
> outlines their desire to develop nanobots capable of self-replication
> when required.

This chapter certainly includes uncautious language. I'm surprised it
didn't get up your nose as well: "This programming capability would form
the core essence of a bionano robotics system and hence enables them
with immense power." (p. 23) And their illustration 15A (p. 22) is only
an artist's conception--the protein helices are smaller than atoms, and
it includes a propeller for motility--but it's described as though it
were an actual proposal.

> They also specifically express the desire to develop a
> toolkit of standard parts including rhodopsin, bacteriorhodopsin, and
> artificial structures derived from those, to act as solar collectors
> for on-site power gathering. If this is not metabolism as you
> conceive it, I'm not sure what does. So I ask, does solar collection
> match your definition of metabolism?

Toolkits are good. I liked what they said about developing toolkits in
the first part of the chapter.

No, solar collection does not fit what I mean by metabolism. Metabolism
requires at least the ability to arrange (e.g. break down) disordered
chemicals into a more useful state. Solar collection is energy supply.
  An electric motor does not metabolize.

> I must also ask if the authors (Ummat, Dubey, Sharma, and Mavroidis)
> are to be considered credible researchers, or not.

I don't know the researchers, though I recognize Mavroidis's name. But
the quality of the chapter is inconsistent. Parts are, frankly,
semi-literate. "This is a traditional method, which has been in use
since quite sometime for designing bio molecules." This may be a
second-language problem, but it should have been edited. I also note
that the first reference gets Drexler's name in the wrong order.

Other parts of the chapter are over-ambitious and under-supported.
Without knowing who wrote which part (and suspecting that some parts may
have been written/compiled by anonymous grad students) I would hesitate
to task the listed authors with the wilder projections.

But perhaps you're right--it appears possible that these researchers are
actually proposing free-floating self-contained self-actuated
self-controlled molecular manufacturing systems. It's certainly
possible to get that idea from reading the less technical parts of the
chapter. I wouldn't have expected this. Maybe I'll write Mavroidis and
see whether he intended to give that impression.

It's great to see ideas of engineered molecular robotic systems get
published. But I wish they had not been published in a chapter that
listed evolution as a desirable property of nanosystems, with no support
or clarification.

Note that in Figure 18, the machines are fastened down. That doesn't
fit the popular conception of nanobots.

The long-term projections and descriptive rhetoric in this chapter do
appear to contradict what I wrote. The actual technology and plans
appear far more sedate. In the end, I'm left unsure whether they're
planning externally controlled, fastened-down, engineered machines and
only mentioning the other stuff to be futuristic, or whether they
actually think evolution and autonomy are desirable research goals.

> There is a similar paper by a subset of those authors (found online here:
> http://www.bionano.neu.edu/Bionanorobotics_Chapter%207_upload.pdf )
> which I will admit I have not read (it's on my list after a paper on
> artificial bacterial foraging strategies, and an application of same
> to electrical design) which dedicates several pages to the topic of
> self-replicating nanobots, with a call for more research on the topic
> and a mention of ongoing research in the area.

The paper has a lot of overlap with the previously cited one. (The
English is better.) I note that their approach to self-replication
appears to be limited to a self-templating self-assembly paradigm: "To
create any system with self replicating mechanism we need to first find
out its most stable state, then we need to calculate its behavior in the
extrinsic gradients and then we need to excite it with energy and supply
of intrinsic materials so that it replicates."

Everyone, please copy me by email on any reply you want me to see; I
don't usually have time to follow sci.nanotech discussions.

Chris 

-- 
Chris Phoenix                                  cphoenix@CRNano.org
Director of Research
Center for Responsible Nanotechnology          http://CRNano.org

Relevant Pages

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