What mass ratio of mass consumed to bot mass per unit time are you supposing? If a bot can consume its own mass ten times per second, and the lab produces a kiloton of bots before releasing them, it still takes nearly two years to consume all biomass on earth, if there is no replenishment. (560 GT biomass counting only carbon.) Presumably we're all in trouble well before that, but it still seems slow compared to what I read into your comments. I also think the bots would likely be slower and less numerous than that. (Heat concerns, rate of movement, and complexity requirements of self-repair would likely make these bots slow, but I don't really know how slow.)
Except, instead of using their onboard oxygen supply to carry blood, they react it with whatever organic molecule they diffuse in to. Because I expect that synthetic catalysts will be much more efficient than nature (because they are rationally optimized and constructed of materials not found in nature, such as diamondroid and/or rare earth ...
Today's post, Raised in Technophilia was originally published on 17 September 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
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