From Michael's article...
What about when it becomes possible to use gene therapy or hormones to compress the interval between childhood and adulthood? (Advances in robotics and new building methods could allow the creation of automated superstructures that produce millions of new humans per year. Other science fictional-sounding scenarios are plausible. CRN tends to hint towards these scenarios only vaguely, no doubt to avoid sounding incredulous, but it is very important to be aware of them.
This is something I hadn't thought of but reading it now sounds completely plausible that some unethical types might use these nano-factories to mass produce people, and mess around with the ageing process in an unethical way of course. I wonder if people will use nano factories to mass produce people for military purposes. Of course bio-engineering is a hot topic but the problems inherent with that seem to be exacerbated when factoring in nanotech.
The creation of transhuman intelligence could entail the rapid disintegration of a carefully constructed network of constraints and safeguards on nanomanufacturing capabilities.
Interesting connection you made here between transhuman, smarter than human intelligence, and the abiltiy to hack into nanomanufacturing safe guards. Certainly the structure of society as a whole will inevitably have to change when transhuman intelligence comes into play, I'd imagine any non-augmented human would feel sufficiently stupid trying to do anything worthwhile surrounded by superior intelligence modified humans. Therefore as Kurzweil mentions in The Age of Spiritual Machines, the non-augmented humans will have to augment themselves to keep up and the people in charge of the nanomanufacturing better augment themselves to come up with even higher saftey measures with regards to nanomanufacturing saftey precautions.
Enhanced humans will quickly create unprecedented effects in economic, social, scientific, and military spheres.
Telepresence, coupled with powerful robotics and sophisticated interfaces that implement commands based on simple gestures, will permit the development of "nano-wizardry" - individual soldiers with sufficient capability to destroy, subvert, or torture entire armies or cities. Independent human flight will become possible with a minimum of aerospace hardware. Reprogrammable phased-array optics allow complete invisibility. Perfect surveillance, neurological enhancements, responsive environments, smart materials, and so on.
I just hope that nanotech is not exploited by the military but I somehow know it will be. This is what angers me about these new technologies is that they obviously get used, imo, for non-productive measures, even destructive measures. This is why greater than human intelligence may be the only solution to actually harbor enough wisdom to show true compassion and not human level cruelty and iresponsibility, you may agree with this sentiment.
Many religions and other belief systems will be ruined.
Nanotechnology will make it feasible to reproduce many classes of Biblical miracles. Humans enhanced with nanoengineered body parts and telerobotic control interfaces may have angel-like or even god-like capabilities. Nanotechnologically facilitated approaches to life extension will rapidly allow the abolition of death. Work will no longer be necessary. Etc.
yay! but somehow God will creep in there somehow, people will probably find even more reason to believe in the divine for how else could such an amazing technology just 'come to be?'
To avoid the negative impact of grey goo, green goo, nano-litter, human rights disasters, nano-wizardry, economic and social upheaval, arms races, and other unforseen risks will require true superintelligence, nothing less. Once created, superintelligence will compound upon itself rapidly, resulting in the creation of agents with deity-class capabilities
You don't have much faith in human nature, well neither do I, the more I think about it the more I realize the true importance of super intelligence in the form of benevolent AI will be, I wish more people would see this. Not enough transhumanists seem to value the importance of 'kinder than human' superintelligence, they seem to forget human irrationality stemming from 'human level' thinking. Human beings, in my opinion, are grossly incapable of making ethical decisions much of the time, especially with regards to Nanotech this could be even worse, and that is one of the reasons I value transhumanist thought so much, but until I was exposed to the Singularity, I never would have thought that people would think to create benevolent AI, a truly amazing idea... I find it interesting how you've taken a pessimistic stance on human nature and put a positive spin on it. Most people can't look at human imperfection square in the eye let alone figure out a potential solution.
