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Eugine_Nier comments on The hard limits of hard nanotech - Less Wrong
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Also, if nanotech can only work at low temperatures and in a vacuum, it's not much of an existential risk.
That doesn't mean it couldn't be used to build threatening things, or threatening quantities of things, that can function in more normal conditions.
Lasers? EMPs that can take down a planet? And more than 99% of the universe is a low-temperature vacuum, so I wouldn't rule out a grey-goo scenario if the nanobots get into space.
Assuming they can build their components out of hydrogen, or if they resort to asteroid mining.
These scenarios assume an AGI directing them. And an unfriendly AGI is an existential risk with or without nano.
And that's why it's so important to distinguish a judgment that an AGI is unFriendly from a hasty, racist assumption about how a different kind of intelligent being might want to act. Just because a being doesn't want to combine some of its macromolecules with other versions of itself doesn't mean it's okay to be racist against it.
Anyone here know anybody like that?
Technical misuse of 'racist'. Bigoted is a potential substitute. Egocentric would serve as spice.
One could speculate on how deep the act actually is here. One recurring feature of the Clippy character is that he attempts to mimic human social behavior in crude and clumsy ways. Maybe Clippy noticed how humans throw accusations of "racism" as an effective way to shame others into shutting up about unpleasant questions or to put them on the defensive, and is now trying to mimic this debating tactic when writing his propaganda comments. So he ends up throwing accusations of "racism" in a way that seems grotesque even by the usual contemporary standards.
Whoever stands behind Clippy, if this is what's actually going on, then hats off for creativity.
I'm behind Clippy, non-ape.
Now, now.
The connotations of calling Vladimir "ape" are insulting among humans; the implication is not just that he is family Hominidae, which he is, but also that he shares other characteristics (such as subhuman intelligence, socially unacceptable hygiene levels, and so forth) with other hominoids like gorillas, orangutans, gibbons and so forth, which he does not.
Let's try to avoid throwing insults around, here.
Admittedly, the comment you're responding to used some pretty negative language to describe you as well; describing your social behavior as "crude and clumsy" is pretty rude. And the fact that the comment was so strongly upvoted despite that is unfortunate.
Still, I would rather you ask for an apology than adopt the same techniques in response.
Just to be clear: this has nothing whatsoever to do with the degree to which you are or aren't a neurotypical human. I would just prefer we not establish the convention of throwing insults at each other on this site.
Okay, thanks for clarifying all of that. You're a good human.
Ever consider he might be the real thing?
Haha! That would be a funny train of thought. An AI hanging out on a blog set up by a non-profit dedicated to researching AI.
Any AGI that isn't Friendly is UnFriendly.
I have never been sexually attracted to any entity or trait, real or fictional. People generally aren't bigoted against me-- the worst I've seen is people treating me like an interesting novelty, which can be somewhat condescending. So there is hope for those with nonstandard goals, at least on some level! :)
It might be a general existential risk but without nanotech the space of things that an unfriendly AGI can do goes down a lot. Lack of practical nanotech reduces chance to FOOM.
Presumably, humans will resort to asteroid mining at some point. They might use hard nanotech for that purpose. If they aren't careful in how they do so, a gray goo might end up taking over any body in the solar system not too warm to support it.
Intentionally designed replicators with thermal shields and heat pumps could be more aggressive. However they would probably tend to be larger and hence less difficult to locate and destroy.
True, though such things (NBC weapons, most likely) would not possess the particular type of world-ending unstoppability that science fiction gray goo does.