EA - Risks from atomically precise manufacturing - Problem profile by Benjamin Hilton

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Risks from atomically precise manufacturing - Problem profile, published by Benjamin Hilton on August 9, 2022 on The Effective Altruism Forum. This problem profile was written for 80,000 Hours. It's based largely on Thoughts on nanotechnology strategy research as an EA cause area and OpenPhil’s cause report into atomically precise manufacturing, and is written for an audience broadly unfamiliar with EA. Summary Both the risks and benefits of advances in atomically precise manufacturing seem like they might be significant, and there is currently little effort to shape the trajectory of this technology. However, there is also relatively little investment going into developing atomically precise manufacturing, which reduces the urgency of the issue. Our overall view Potentially top depending on fit Working on this problem could be among the best ways of improving the long-term future, but there are fewer high-impact opportunities to work on this issue than on our top priority problems. Why could risks from atomically precise manufacturing be a pressing problem? Atomically precise manufacturing is a form of particularly advanced nanotechnology. With atomically precise manufacturing we could build products out of individual atoms and molecules, allowing us to perfectly create a very wide range of products with very few flaws. Effectively, this would be like having perfect 3D printers that can produce anything. Atomically precise manufacturing might be feasible, and there’s incentive to develop it Molecular machines – tiny mechanical machines on the scale of just a few individual molecules – exist in nature, which means they’re definitely possible to create. In fact, we’ve actually produced a wide variety of simple artificial molecular machines. With time, we may be able to design and produce machines as small and complex as biological organisms. This could be useful for a number of reasons: Cheap energy — we may be able to produce even more efficient batteries and solar cells. The use of semiconductors in these devices means that they’re already one of the things we make to the highest degree of precision – it’s possible that even more precision could improve these devices further. Carbon capture and storage — we may be able to produce cheap, high-performance nanoscale devices to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Medicine — we may be able to produce devices on the scale of human cells for targeting medical issues. Cheap manufacturing — we may be able to take apart most things (even e.g. trash) and use the individual atoms to produce anything else, meaning that everything we manufacture could theoretically be made in one location using only extremely cheap inputs. While we’re confident it’s possible to create the technology required for simple atomically precise manufacturing, it’s not clear that we could create technology advanced enough to do everything in the above list. But if we can do any of the above, it seems like there will be significant incentive to develop and produce this technology. There are risks associated with atomically precise manufacturing There appear to be substantial (and perhaps even existential) risks associated with developing atomically precise manufacturing: Widespread access to atomically precise manufacturing could lead to widespread ability to unilaterally produce things as destructive as nuclear weapons or catastrophic pandemics. States with this technology may have an incentive to produce new kinds of weapons with atomically precise manufacturing (even if most people don’t have access to this technology). Manufacturing that can disassemble and produce products from extremely cheap inputs could lead to a much faster design and prototyping cycle for weapons. We may be able to produce more powerful computers, which could increase risks from tra...