The book Global Catastrophic Risks states that it does not appear plausible that molecular manufacturing will not come into existence before 2040 or 2050. I am not at all an expert on molecular manufacturing, but this seems hard to believe, given how little work seems to be going into it. I couldn't find any sources discussing when molecular manufacturing will come into existence. Thoughts?
There are reasons very little work is going into it - the concept makes very little sense compared to manipulating biological systems or making systems that work similar to biological systems. See http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6227/1221.short or this previous post of mine: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hs5/for_fai_is_molecular_nanotechnology_putting_our/97rl
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