Nanobots

“Nanorobotics is the technology of creating machines or robots at or close to the microscopic scale of a nanometre. More specifically, nanorobotics refers to the still largely hypothetical nanotechnology engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots.”(1)

Raymond Kurzweil spoke with BUSINESS WEEK Senior Writer Otis Port about nanotechnology, which may enable engineers to construct microscopic computers and robots, or nanobots, atom by atom. These machines could dramatically affect the future of human intelligence.

I found an article of Nanorobotics which is a form of artificial intelligence, in which the inventor Raymond Kurzweil did an interview. Ive highlighted some snippets that I found very interesting. For the full interview follow the link at the bottom of this post.

Q: Do you have any doubts that a superior intelligence will emerge in the next few decades?

A: No. It's inevitable. For example, nanotubes would allow computing at the molecular level. A one-inch cube of nanotube circuitry would be about a billion times more powerful than the human brain, in terms of computing capacity. That raw computing capacity is a necessary but not sufficient condition to achieve human-level intelligence in a machine.

Q: Won't we end up feeling like pets?

A: Those same nanobots that can scan the human brain will also provide a type of neural implant to extend human intelligence--expand your memory and improve your pattern-recognition capabilities. Ultimately, they will augment human intelligence quite profoundly as we go through the 21st century.



Q: If nanobots are controlling the brain, how will we know they're not fooling us with false signals?

A: Well, actually, another thing we could do would be virtual reality. If we had nanobots take up positions by every nerve fiber that comes from all of our five senses, they could either do nothing, in which case you'd perceive the world normally--or they could shut off the nerve impulses coming from our real senses and replace them with simulated impulses representing what you would perceive if you were in the virtual environment.

Q: Let's go back to machines that design new machines. Doesn't that mean they could evolve utterly different ways of thinking?

A: Sure. Once we have intelligent systems in a nonbiological medium, they're going to have their own ideas, their own agendas. They'll evolve off in completely unpredictable directions. Instead of being derived only from human civilization, new concepts will also be derived from their electronic civilization.

Q: There won't be a clear distinction between us and them?

A: No. But remember, this will be emerging gradually from within our own civilization. It's the next phase of our own evolution. It's only a threat if you believe things should always stay the same as they are today.

Sources used within this post

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanorobotics
(2) http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_36/b3645053.htm