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The irrelevance of nanobotsSuppose we have a nanofactory in which some process is being supervised by an AI. It doesn't matter whether the AI is right there, in close proximity, or some distance away. It could have sensors telling it what's going on. It could do the processing somewhere else, and then send back instructions. Whether the AI exerts immediate control or remote control, the result is the same. This implies that it doesn't have to be small. It doesn't have to be on the same level as the process it supervises. It could be macroscopic. As far as that goes, it doesn't really have to be an AI. It could be a human pretending to be an AI. It could be a team of humans and computers. In previous sections I have adopted the word "agent" to mean some intelligent entity that is capable of doing a job that would normally be done by a human being. An agent could be a human, or a computer, or a team of humans and computers. It could be a nanobot, or it could be somebody sitting at a nanotech workstation with a window into nanospace. An agent could be an entire corporation. Thus it isn't necessary to postulate nanobots. Whatever a nanobot could do, could be done by some combination of humans and computers on the macroscopic level. (BTW, throughout this discussion I am making a distinction between a nanobot, which is an intelligent robot, and a nanite, which is a little machine that does things without knowing what it is doing -- like an ant or a termite. I am asserting the irrelevance of nanobots, not nanites.) |