First edition cover of The Limits to Growth (I’ve lost mine, but it looked like this)
I had read Silent Spring before the first Earth Day (now 39 years ago), and I recall telling my classmates that it seemed like a bad idea to spread persistent poisons all over the landscape of a finite world. I [...]
Van der Waals (forces ≥ Casimir-Polder)
The Casimir effect can be viewed as a manifestation of the quantum-mechanical zero-point energy of the vacuum, and has recently been hyped as if it were something new and mysterious that will assist or maybe ruin advanced nanomechanical systems. It has inflamed the minds of something-for-nothing energy enthusiasts, too.
In reality, [...]
A useful resource
Nir London of the Macromolecular Modeling Blog has invited me to offer my perspective on the field. After patiently waiting for me to complete it, he’s posted the resulting essay, which I have cross-posted below.
The Macromolecular Modeling Blog is hosted by the Rosetta Design Group, which offers molecular modeling services based on the [...]
Michael Anissimov interviewed Singularity Institute President Michael Vassar. They discussed SIAI research activity, the current composition of the team, and the reasons for supporting the organization’s efforts.
Link
Michael Anissimov reports on research which he did together with Tom McCabe, Rolf Nelson, Anna Salamon and Steve Rayhawk in the summer of 2008, under the sponsorship of the SIAI.
“The Uncertain Future — Simple AI Self-Improvement Models“
Jeriaska has compiled links to talks by SIAI Research Fellow Eliezer Yudkowsky, including some not yet mentioned on this blog, at Accelerating Future.
In addition, Tim Tyler has collected lectures and discussions by Yudkowsky. See the collection of links at Facebook.
Industrial-scale mechanosynthetic machinery (probably not optimized for this)
Ball mill, Zhengzhou Hengxing Heavy Equipment Co.,Ltd
Volume 1, Number 1 of Nature Chemistry is now out, and the next issue will include an article titled “Activating catalysts with mechanical force”. This article reports a nice experimental result and helps to illustrate the broad range of physical processes included [...]The OpenCog team will be offering a series of “hands on” OpenCog tutorials in April and May, aimed at teaching folks how to run and make changes to various AI code that’s been written for OpenCog.
Among those giving the tutorials are Drs Joel Pitt, who is working on OpenCog with SIAI sponsorship, Nil Geisweiller, and [...]
Robert Brown
The first to observe the motions that Lucretius had explained
I read a new paper today titled “A Bipedal DNA Brownian Motor with Coordinated Legs”, but I find that this has prompted me to write not about what is new there — an advance in mechanical DNA nanotechnologies that is related to purely-DNA-based logic circuits [...]
On April 26th, I’ll be giving a keynote addess at the Berkeley Nanotechnology Forum, a cross-disciplinary meeting organized by the Berkeley Nanotechnology Club and sponsored by the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Berkeley Nanosciences & Nanoengineering Institute, and the Center of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems, among others. The meeting will be Sunday, April [...]SIAI Director of Research Dr. Ben Goertzel was interviewed by Immortality Institute Executive Director Justin Loew at the ImmInst Sunday Evening Updates, Dec. 2008. Video is available online. Topics include Goertzel’s AGI roadmap, the Global Brain, and AGI risks.
Molecular manufacturing (some development required)
Montage of frames from the Productive Nanosystems video by John Burch
While upgrading parts of the E-drexler.com website, though, I’ve been re-reading some of the on-line content from Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and Computation, the book that grew into, then out of, my MIT dissertation. Nanosystems explores what physics tells us about [...]SIAI Director of Research Dr. Ben Goertzel participated in a panel discussion on “AI Convergence with SIAI Scientific Advisors Dr. Barney Pell and Dr. Steve Omohundro, SIAI Director of Partnerships Jonas Lamis, and Google Director of Research Dr. Peter Norvig at Convergence ‘08.
Video and a transcript are available online.