Molecular assembler

A) A perpetual waterfall…

1. Imagine that you have a machine which recycles everything and gives you back anything you want. Fundamentally such a machine will consume basic chemical elements (such as carbon and hydrogen) and will produce any possible chemical compound (from the simplest one, such as spaghetti, to the most complex one, such as living beings). Apparently the amount of necessary information or energy is beyond current technology, but in the future such machines could be built, to some extent at least. For example the necessary energy could be produced by nuclear or matter- antimatter fusion, while the encoding of information could be provided by supercomputers. In the case of ‘producing’ a human being, all that you would have to do afterwards would be to add some memories…

B) What is an MA (molecular assembler)?

2. According to Wikipedia, a molecular assembler, as defined by K. Eric Drexler, is a “proposed device able to guide chemical reactions by positioning reactive molecules with atomic precision.” A molecular assembler is a kind of molecular machine. Some biological molecules such as ribosomes fit this definition. This is because they receive instructions from messenger RNA and then assemble specific sequences of amino acids to construct protein molecules. However, the term ‘molecular assembler’ usually refers to theoretical human-made devices. [1]

C) Is it possible that all products can be produced by MAs?

3. According to Physics Forums, Eric Drexler and Richard Smalley argued over the practicalities of building a molecular assembler based on the principles of mechanosynthesis. The idea behind this is that if you can build molecular sized grips to hold individual atoms you could possibly manipulate the molecules to break or make chemical bonds. With a well designed system it may be able to co-ordinate huge numbers of these actions at once in such a way as to break things down at an atomic level and rebuild them. [2]

D) Has the first MA been built?

4. According to New Atlas, an artificial analog of the biological ribosome has been designed and synthesized by Professor David Leigh FRS and his team in the School of Chemistry at the University of Manchester. Leigh’s group has concentrated on molecular machines that generate mechanical movement that imitates the function of macroscopic machines. A primary goal of such studies is a molecular assembler, a proposed device able to guide chemical reactions by positioning reactive molecules with atomic precision. Such a machine is potentially capable of synthesizing chemical structures that cannot be made by conventional chemical means, as the energy barriers that prevent some molecules from forming can be largely overcome through mechanical manipulation.

5. A number of artificial molecular machines have been fabricated in recent years. For example, small molecular machines have been used as molecular motors, to store information. Others have been used to aid the synthesis of organic chemicals to switch the action of a catalyst on and off, and to change the ‘handedness’ of a reaction product. Large synthetic DNA molecules have been used to guide the formation of bonds between building blocks that would not normally react, and to assemble gold nanoparticles in particular sequences. However, until now there has been no analog constructed of even a crude molecular assembler. [3]

E) What is the danger posed by MAs?

6. According to EDinformatics, there are two entwined controversies surrounding the creation of artificial or synthetic molecular assemblers. The first is whether they can be built or even exist. Secondarily, if they can be built, then what is the potential ecological impact and what are the appropriate political or regulatory responses.

7. Professor Richard Smalley, a researcher in the field of nanotechnology, takes the position that any non-natural assembler is impossible, while naturally-evolved ribosomes are the only possible realization. His opinion may be considered to be one of carbon chauvinism. On the other hand, K. Eric Drexler, founder of the Foresight Institute, asserts that such general assemblers are inevitable.

8. Nonetheless, within the United States, the National Nanotechnology Initiative and the Texas Nanotechnology Initiative (TNI) are proceeding with research. Both initiatives have close ties to the US military-industrial complex, and are presumably seeking to do molecular engineering of advanced materials for military use. Currently there are no regulations governing such research, and like many military projects, there is little if any outside observation or oversight.

9. This lack of regulation and scrutiny has alarmed some observers, including Greenpeace and the Foresight Institute. The fear is that the developed technology could pose a serious ecological threat to life, and accordingly they advocate strong controls. Drexler of the Foresight Institute and others state that artificially created molecular assemblers could be used to build more dangerous devices that represent a clear competitive threat to all natural life.

10. The suggested danger to life could arise in the form of grey goo which consumes carbon to make more of itself. If unchecked such mechanical replication could potentially consume whole ecoregions or the whole Earth (ecophagy), or it could simply outcompete other natural lifeforms for necessary resources such as carbon, ATP, or UV light (which some nanomotor examples run on). Another more likely dangerous form is green goo, which co-opts a natural biologically-evolved infrastructure, as a virus or prion does, as it replicates. Accordingly, Drexler advocates quite strict guidelines, including the prohibition of the creation of any such ‘replicator’ in Earth’s biosphere. [4]

F) The day the Earth stood still…

11. According to the following article by Chris Haugen, nanotechnology is the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. It is in a sense tiny robots manufacturing other robots as well as creating other products using the molecules. This in a sense is like the microbots in The Day The Earth Stood Still. They are tiny robots that eat up things that have molecules to either make more robots or build other things. The only difference between the two is that the ones in The Day The Earth Stood Still are visible because they are microbots instead of on the nano scale.

12. A situation that is very similar to the microbots eating everything in The Day The Earth Stood Still is the fear of the ‘Grey Goo’ situation happening with nanotechnology in real-life. Grey Goo is the doomsday prediction that says the nanobots will self-replicate out of control and eat up all life on Earth leaving nothing but the nanobots. This problem as you can see is almost the same exact problem as what happens in The Day The Earth Stood Still. While this doomsday prediction was thought of as being very likely to happen before, it has been recently discovered that it most likely isn’t possible in today’s day and age. Eric Drexler, who is known for being the father of nanotechnology, has shown that the current nanotechnology is not capable of producing self-replicating machines. He also has said that the only way this situation can occur is by a deliberate attempt, not by accident. [5]

G) Will MAs inaugurate the ideal egalitarian society?

Or will they make the rich richer and the poor poorer?

13. Beyond the environmental risks, we may think of the following benefits related to MAs:

- All products (food and machinery) will be free.

- The working class will be abolished.

- All production will be done by MAs (together with AI).

- Humans will be freed from the need to work or to produce anything on their own.

(Provided that a sufficient amount of energy will be available to feed the assemblers.)

H) A financial analog of an MA: a perpetual motion money machine…

14. According to Investopedia, quantitative easing is an unconventional monetary policy in which a central bank purchases government securities or other securities from the market in order to increase the money supply and encourage lending and investment. When short-term interest rates are at or approaching zero, normal open market operations, which target interest rates, are no longer effective, so instead a central bank can target specified amounts of assets to purchase. Quantitative easing increases the money supply by purchasing assets with newly created bank reserves in order to provide banks with more liquidity. [6]

I) Will finally MAs be available to anyone?
Or will they be available (due perhaps to the enormous cost of construction and operation) to the few who, by the way, already control the means of production?

15. Technology and politics (the way technology is used) are two different things- While technology can alter the sociopolitical landscape, political decisions determine the applications and purpose of technology in everyday life.

16. Perhaps in the future there will be two groups of people: Those (the big majority) who will be wealthy enough, and those (a small minority) who will be very rich. Still it seems that the big majority will keep on working for the few ones who control the means of production- either this is a sewing machine, a central bank or a molecular assembler.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_assembler]
[2]: [https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/molecular-assemblers.519258/]
[3]: [https://newatlas.com/molecule-assembler-synthesis-peptide-ribosome/25759/]
[4]: [https://www.edinformatics.com/nanotechnology/molecular_assembler.htm]
[5]: [http://pages.erau.edu/~andrewsa/chris_haugen_project3.html]
[6]: [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/quantitative-easing.asp]

9/1/2019

Image: Waterfall is a lithograph by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher, first printed in October 1961. It shows a perpetual motion machine where water from the base of a waterfall appears to run downhill along the water path before reaching the top of the waterfall.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_(M._C._Escher)]