Limited-control approach

From Wise Nano

Contents 1 Overview 2 How it works 3 Advantages 4 Disadvantages 5 References

Overview

Molecular manufacturing will be extremely desirable, powerful, and dangerous. A tabletop general-purpose manufacturing system could be used to build weapons of mass destruction simply by downloading the weapon blueprint/design file.

There are three possibilities:

1. Total control
2. Limited control
3. No control

This article explores the "Some control" approach.

The point of the approach is to make most of the capability of the nanofactory available, without making it easy to use for destructive purposes. There are two forces that must be balanced.

1. It must be easy for good guys to build good stuff.
2. It must be hard for bad guys to build bad stuff.

If it's too hard to build good stuff, then a black market will emerge, leading to a "no control" situation.

If it's too easy to build bad stuff, again there's a "no control" situation.

How it works

In this approach, nanofactories would be widely available, but restricted. Unrestricted nanofactories would be considered very bad stuff. Certain products would also be bad (depending on jurisdiction). Tools that make it too easy to build unrestricted nanofactories would also have to be considered bad, or at least restricted.

There are several options for deciding what's good and what's bad.

1. Program the nanofactory to only build some things.
   • This lacks flexibility; too easy to work around
2. Automated product scan (like virus scanning)
   • Requires nanofactories to get "updates" or submit designs to central decider
3. Manual scan (whitelist)
   • Lots of bureaucracy and delay

Hybrid approaches may work; for example, any product using only large diamond cubes, motors, and computers can be built without further checking. (Even this isn't a perfectly safe rule, but may be a reasonable compromise.

Advantages

Allows some control to be kept, at least for a while. If done well, minimizes black market (note that this requires cooperation from corporations to avoid another Napster). Approaches that require nanofactories to check in on each design may be useful for weapons control.

Disadvantages

Privacy concerns, annoying bureaucracy, artificial scarcity, or sheer cussedness will encourage people to "hack" the system and build unrestricted nanofactories.

The administration, whatever form it takes, will have a strong temptation to become control freaks.

References

Safe Utilization of Advanced Nanotechnology