Drexler outlines a vision for a nano-printer at the scale of a garage wall that can crank out a fully assembled, ready to drive new car every 15 minutes.

Small products can easily be assembled into larger objects - especially when the interfaces between parts are using nanotech to bond to one another.

Over the past 20 years or so I've become convinced that people alone are not yet smart or skilled enough to produce this kind of technology. The technology is absolutely achievable. The most compelling example of this kind of "tech" is biology itself - living, growing things. Cells turn nano-scale work into macro-scale products every single moment of every day. People, working together under a large-scale, coordinated effort can eventually create machines capable of this same feat. But...I think we will need AI assistance to get there. My hope is that an AGI can assist us on the path to this goal within the next several years. But without AGI, I fear it will be a long time.

He's also a convicted felon. There's a different story about this guy from the same news site. He led a burglary ring targeting local businesses and was convicted in 2008 I think. In other words: The Best People.

It's a quick answer, but it's well-intentioned: Read your Drexler.

>"But governments and corporations won't let that happen!"

That argument cracks me up a little. Once the tools are in the hands of the public, they won't be so easily controlled. History has shown us time and again that when you put technology out into the public, it's quickly re-purposed, modified and jail-broken. The potential for molecular scale factories is just too great. Billions of people will want to see that technology freed up for the good of humanity.

On one hand it represents a huge, existential threat to the survival of the Earth and everything on it. On the other hand, it represents the greatest technological advance in human history with the potential to free humanity once and for all from poverty, starvation, misery and even mortality. This tech will absolutely not be controlled by any one company or entity. People will want it for themselves and at the lowest possible price - ideally, free.

I hope you're right. I definitely think you're right in the sense that AI is going to be required to develop molecular scale machinery. The only way your timeline works though is if companies that develop and control the AI begin training on them as soon as possible. Unfortunately, I don't know for certain whether or not these AI companies share this goal.

One company that does give me some hope in that regard is DeepMind. While I don't think Demis Hassabis would come right out and say it, I think this is probably his goal and that of Page and Brin. The AlphaFold project seems to be a good start toward that goal. If you're able to make predictions about how amino acid chains will self-fold and/or assemble into proteins, you're at least part-way toward making molecular scale machine parts.

IF DeepMind begins work on this right away, we may get the molecular scale assemblers of my dreams in my lifetime. Fingers crossed.

Maybe he's a Russian troll? Or a Republican? Who can tell the difference these days?

It's not just stupidity though. In the case of Hawley, there's also his pure, unadulterated evil.

It's not quite on-topic, but I'm reminded of a headline I saw earlier today that Kyle Rittenhouse wants to be a pilot for UPS or FedEx. I had a very similar thought when I read it - NO farking WAY I would pilot/co-pilot with that waste of oxygen.

This kind of technology will enable small groups or even individuals to be entirely self-sufficient so long as raw materials and energy are available for the products. The moment a technology like this becomes available, I'm building a rocket and moving to the moon or Mars. I think Earth will be just too chaotic for a while. Ultimately, I'll probably go into suspended animation and have my automated star ship seek out a suitable planet for terraforming someplace else in the galaxy.

What you're describing is often referred to as "molecular nanotechnology" (MNT) or "atomically precise manufacturing" (APM). Yes, technology is headed in that direction and I hope that with the arrival of strong artificial intelligence, these kinds of molecular factories can be developed quickly. While I think that a mature APM won't resemble biology very closely, I do think that the molecular-scale mechanics of biology can be used to bootstrap our way toward those more mature machines.

I strongly recommend looking into the writings of Drexler and Feynmann on this topic. While I've been reading about this potential tech since the 1980s, my first real introduction to the concept was via the book, "Nano!" by Ed Regis. The key for me was realizing the parallels between biology and nanotechnology. One can think of a cow as a "machine" for transforming grass and water into beef. While the concept of nanotech is not exactly akin to biology, it should be capable of similar products. While a theoretical APM box should be capable of making beef, it should just as easily be capable of making anything else we can model at the atomic or molecular scale - computers, televisions, clothing, solar panels, housing and construction materials, food, robots, etc. - quite literally anything we can imagine. But instead of "growing" these products over a period of months, the directed machinery of a mature APM could crank these products out in a matter of minutes or hours.

It's a really exciting topic and I'm sorry to see it's not as widely discussed as it should be. It is the ultimate in technology and it's one that will completely transform the world - likely the entire solar system and beyond.