This just reminds me of my favorite episode of doctor who.. they were on a spaceship in the future where repair bots were under the order to repair the ship with whatever was possible to get the job done and keep it running. As the years went on, the ships problems grew and supplies dwindled until the robots ended up using the human crew as spare parts to protect the ship (an eye ball to fix the camera, a beating heart to fix a broken pluming pump and so on) dark, creepy and yet a really fun episode
I loved the PC game Grey Goo. Really great RTS gameplay, while having fantastic voice acting and animation in their cut scenes. Worth playing at least once as an RTS fan.
@@AustinThomasPhDWhich is even more of a shame since the excellent storyline was wasted on only a handful of missions per side clearly aimed at just getting people into the multiplayer. This game really deserved a Starcraft-length story campaign...
There was a minecraft mod called greygoo and you could set its replication speed to whatever you wanted. Someone did an experiment where they put the avatar in a hole where they couldn't be touched for about one hour which was something like ten days in minecraft at the time. When he opened the door to his shelter his computer almost died his frame rate dropped to one every three minutes. He had to reload the world multiple times and at that point and when he finally got it to reload after deactivation of the mod the entire world was almost completely converted.
I love how this channel challenges my brain to think differently, as well as being lighthearted and fun, and original. This was a particularly interesting episode! Thanks as usual 🎉
The "thought experiment" concept is fascinating. It can be used for theories. But it can also be used with real life, actual events. Get good enough at it and you will be able to see the future; or at least a close enough approximation of it.
@@danielduncan6806 I’m not an expert in chemistry but I have some knowledge. It would be basically impossible for a nano machine made completely of carbon to take carbon from other molecules. In chemistry the only way to take atoms away from other molecules is to undergo a reaction in which the recipient molecule is more attracted to the carbon than the donor and can therefore “steal” it away. There are much more stable bonds than carbon-carbon so a machine made of carbon would not be able to just take the carbon from other molecules. It may be able to do it in some very niche cases and circumstances but certainly not in a universal sense. Not going to lie, this is a pretty basic flaw in the thought experiment that the author should have known.
Bacteria also grow exponentially, but they are easily kept in check by things like i.e. our immune system! No reason to believe it would be different for nanobots!
In a grey goo scenario, you'd likely be dead before your immune system could respond. You'd be stripped of skin before your body could do anything, and the macrophages your body would use would just be more food for the nanobots.
The video game Horizon Zero Dawn explores this idea, but not with nano bots. The robots were a swarm of autonomous military robots, that included a large one that could manufacture all of the other types, they ranged in size and function. The key feature was that they could use biomass as an emergency fuel source. Unfortunately the swarm stoped responding to commands and began replicating and using biomass exclusively for fuel. Eventually destroying the world. It’s a good story for those unfamiliar.
To further alleviate anyone's concerns on grey goo, there's also alot of discussion as to if self replicating nanomachines are possible to realistically create. See info on the Drexler-Smalley debate for more details. Also as for why the required technology might not be too heavily researched, you could do most of the work you'd want those Grey goo possible nanobots more efficiently and easily with "clanking self replicators". Basically just larger scale machines of some kind that can also build more of themselvea. Like a Von Neumann probe or a Dyson swarm construction drone of that can also 3D print and assemble all of it's constituent components. Those exaples would be big enough to shoot with whatever shiny space guns we have by the time they're around should they get uppity.
I would assume self replication is possible given such nano machines already exist. We call them "life" and they are everywhere. The thing I consider a problem for the idea is evolution. Replicators would need to make perfect copies of themselves. Anything less, and they would end up competing with themselves. This could, of course, end up making no difference to us. One kind of goo or ten kinds can still eat all the things. But, if life is any kind of example, an equilibrium state would be reached. I imagine we'd see cities or sections of them overrun and then a rapid slowing of the spread. Which would still suck for the people and other life in the area. Or it might spread like the pandemic. A global outbreak but limited by various factors. Life will certainly try to fight back. Be it immune response or SG-1 with P90s and plot armor. The biggest threat is the scenario Simon mentioned where someone does it on purpose. Humans can plan for these issues and invent countermeasures. But you're definitely right. Self replication isn't necessary at the nano scale so we might not go there. OTOH Bitcoin isn't necessary. Blockchain is still a solution in search of a problem to fix. Sometimes humans do things because we can and for no practical reason.
@@samgordon9756 Life is the best example of gray goo. The way biotechnology is advancing, we probably would find easier to create custom life forms to solve our problems, like the frog cell one. Furthermore, we could also use custom life forms as convenient teraformers. We would have to make then extremely resistent to change to avoid natural selection. More ways to avoid errors when duplicating and a lot of failsafes. We would also need to maybe make it respond to specific EM frequencies to control it. Maybe some biological computing analog unity in each cell. They would also need to be immune to viruses that can mutate the DNA of cells it is unable to sabotage.
another good alleviation of concern, is that the most immediate source of raw materials for a malfunctioning nanobot would be the other nanobot that just built it
@@sebbescott that's likely a last option scenario for them should there be a lack of materials in the area. I'd assume these things would have a means of identifying which is a nanite and which aren't
Ok, just a few questions that pop into mind: 1 - Wouldn't the grey goo also feed on other grey goo since it too is made from carbon? 2 - Can you even program GG to recognize the carbon in other GG? 3 - Surely you can't make GG solely out of carbon? 4 - How would it even get the energy for all that cloning? 5 - And even if there´s a solution for all the above, there must be some wear and tear, those buggers wouldn´t live forever... Would they?
Add 6. Every living being is an expert in fighting nanoscale invasions. From the bacteria to human anything alive don't want to die so eventually grey goo would probably turned into another virus of sorts
1 - You could program it not to. 2 - Yes, surely, look at most species on the planet. They don't feed on their own kind, generally, so it must be possible to have a mechanism for avoiding this scenario. 3 - As far as I am concerned as an IT person, it's technically possible. Demos of nanomachines, made entirely of carbon, have been able to make all the sufficient systems with which you could construct a NAND gate, which means that constructing any kind of computing mechanism out of carbon is virtually more of a matter of scale. From a materials science standpoint, I can't say anything about it, I don't know. 4 - Great question, and an important limiting factor. 1982's The Thing, a similar self-replicating nightmare, has been pretty much ruled out of feasibility due to energy limitations. Nevertheless, the Sun does exist, and will for some time to come. You could reap all the necessary energy through solar panels at the cost of a sufficiently slow reproduction rate. 5 - If reproduction rate is high enough, a GG would outpace its own death. If the average nanobot can replicate itself just slightly more than 1 time before it breaks down; Say out of a million nanobots, 1 manages to replicate itself twice, while every other one is just cloned once; Exponential growth still applies. It's another slowing factor, but surely it must have been accounted for by a serious paper into the matter; And nevertheless does not eradicate the scenario from feasibility.
The backstory of Zero Dawn: Horizon also deals with Grey Goo. The depiction in the story was pretty accurate in terms of time, according to some other vid I watched a while back. Also it's a great and in that regard terrifying story, give it a try ;)
if I remember correctly, the enemy in zero dawn was not nano-robots but "just" self-replicating robots that run on biofuel and they could convert ALL bio-material into fuel p,s we and all plant stuff is bio mater 😬 I don't know what would be scarier to become fuel or that that scenario is quite plausible
These time frames are absurdly stupid and impossible. Grey goo is impossible so nothing terrifying about it. Even if it existed it is likely you could swallow a spoonful with nothing happening but perhaps a Fever at which point they all die. The machinery needed for them is not like factory machines. Its nice to think about it like that but in reality there are other factors at play which would cause them to fall apart or burn up with the slightest change in conditions.
You should Cover Strangelets some time as those are particles that even though hypothetical probably exist and could turn any other particle they come in contact with also into a stanglet.
We've been making self-replicating nanomachines for 3.8 billion years. Life is very good at defending against tiny replicators. It seems to me that self-replicating nanobots that are capable of disassembling every living thing without being disassembled by an evolved replicator are a lot more difficult to make than we assume.
12:03 I wouldn't be so sure about that. If we are able to build self-replicating Nano machines at the molecular level out of carbon we very well could put living things back together too using the same methods and machines.
I remember reading a science fiction story back in the late XXth century, set in a near-future Boston. There was a passing reference to the dome over the former site of MIT, dating from the Gray Goo Boo-boo.
One way to possibly mitigate the damage would be to build / hardwire into the nanobots a preset replication limit. Each one could be set to only replicate 10 times then deactivate (problems would come when they advance to the point where they can override their own internal programming).
or do the copy wrong. and that's how you get CANCER. That's basically what grey goo is - cancer for the planet. I was hoping Simon would draw a parallel between the two but he didn't. Cancer, for as bad as it is, isn't even a 1:1 comparison. It replicates without limit, but it doesn't disassemble. It just takes whatever resources it can get its hands on. And cells have NUMEROUS safety mechanisms to prevent cells from being cancer. But yet even with that, we still see it, a lot. So if you're going to make self-replicating nano bots, you better have a whole raft of safeties built into the system. One "foolproof" safety is simply not enough when you consider the "what if's".
Definitely want an “ending condition” for any self-replicator, and maybe a self-destruct triggerable via external signal. Of course, anyone whose done programming understands it’s far too easy to make a logic mistake and send a program into an endless loop.
Just so you know. Each robot replicating 10 times is still exponential growth and could cause a run away reaction. Even every robot only replicating 2 times is exponential growth and would be very very bad. 😊
You know, in the _game_ "Grey Goo", the Goo was actually the _good guy._ Its purpose was cataloguing all life in the universe, and it fought off an unnamed alien civilisation bent on snuffing it all out, basically from a sense of professional indignation at them invalidating its life's purpose. Everyone just _assumed_ it went rampant because it cared little about people's feelings since it knew the larger scope of things :p
Your final words are so very true ! Sadly ! Just bury our heads in the sand/dirt and let someone else solve the problem ! Its a good job we didn't think that way at the start of WW2 and not fight against Nazi Germany.
One step up would be the "Faro Plague" from the Horizon series. look up a compilation video of cinematics from Horizon Zero Dawn regarding the Faro Plague. Frightening.
@@ErickSoares3 Hydrogen isn’t a useful building block in itself. You would need to use some fission to turn in into a structural component. So unless your nanobot is sun sized it won’t work.
Why would ignition be a problem for the nanobots in any scenario? Like they can use CO2 anyway, and one of the byproducts from carbon combustion is CO2. The only issue would be getting the heat off themselves. In fact they could use that waste heat to basically destroy all opposition to them.
I love how this video talk about the possibility of handling the problem of grey goo if we have enough time. Oh, you sweet summer child, have you not paid attention the last 2 years? Politicians will still be arguing about it by the time we're all dead.
What about just energy requirements? These things would need some sort of power source to continue functioning. And the amount of energy they would need to expend to break down pre-existing objects would probably vary from material to material; it's not like these things just magically absorb carbon as soon as they touch it, so breaking apart a diamond is still probably going to be pretty difficult.
Hmmm, maybe we could program them to ONLY feed on CO2 and only replicate a fixed number of generations before dying out. We could release subsequent waves until we got to optimal CO2 concentration. We’d have to have some foolproof error correction though, lol.
When I read Engines of Creation back in 99 it changed my perspective on life. Then I found out he wrote another book Nanosystems. Its a technical description of a microwave size machine that can change raw components into objects and produce excess energy. His doctoral was a design for a satellite to print panels on a wax surface, unrolling the product, and melting the wax for reuse
Left out the Achilles heel of a rampaging nano swarm, which is basic programming architecture. By necessity, such a swarm would need to be governed and coordinated by an operating system vastly more complex than the individual base unit. The governing system not having a basic bug detection kit and lacking the ability to self correct under set parameters is a scenario that is unlikely at best. This level of self correction is currently available on any smart phone. The idea that a programmer would omit such a basic safety feature is like assuming that Tesla would fully realize and implement self driving cars while simultaneously forgetting to install brakes on any of them. The safety and correction features are a basic and integral part of any network architecture. Without this the concept of software patches would not exist. Breath easy world, stopping a grey goo apocalypse is as simple as uploading V1.01a
Even if a bunch of nanobots escaped a secret lab somewhere in some desolate desert and subsequently had a couple of weeks to unnoticed multiply and scour the area for all available carbon - since the nanobots themselves are mad from carbon and since each individual bot is too simple to be able to discriminate between "us and them" when looking for carbon to process - what's to keep them from eating themselves continually?
In my opinion, if we create nanobots that can self replicate from organic material... It would just be another form of life. Actual life would evolve and compete with it given enough time.
Cool idea bro... I think I'll build one! I don't think we'd have much to worry about from a bot having a randomly-introduced error or two in its code. Scenario: A cosmic ray strikes a bot and flips a bit, nullifying the prohibition against "eating" things on the do-not-eat list. Result: The bot eats *everything* it can. Seems horrifying at first brush, but we need to consider "competition". A swarm of these bots would be eating not just people, but other bots. A swarm of cannibalistic bots... reminds me of a snake eating its own tail. The end result is a much slower rate of swarm growth. Resources would also be quickly used up, and the majority of the swarm would simply die. Scenario: A bot swarm starts, begins stripping carbon from atmospheric CO2. Oh no! This continues unchecked until... the atmosphere becomes over-oxygenated. A single spark amongst the swarm, and BOOM! It falls to the ground in a flaming cloud of CO2-generating sparks. Realistically, we don't have much to worry about. It takes more than carbon to build a bot. Carbon is abundant, but some of the other required materials are not. And energy is not free, so mining and refining of raw materials would be SLOW. Think about these questions: Why hasn't a random virus yet wiped out the entirety of the human race? Why haven't plants covered every last square inch of space on earth? Why isn't every cubic meter of ocean packed with fish? Why are there only 8 billion humans on the earth? Joe and Judy can produce about one child a year during their productive years. Those children can do the same. How many generations will it take to overcrowd the earth? Exponential growth! Except... resource restrictions, competition, death, choice...
There's a pretty simple solution: We limit the number of times a bot can reproduce, as well as its lifespan. We also put a self-destruct feature in tied to some kind of dead-man switch.
Grey Goo sounds like a good super villain weapon, see you in 20 years at Casual Criminalist, Simon. That is, after I destroy half the planet with self-replicating nano-memes.
There's a few reasons I believe grey goo to be an almost impossible scenario. Firstly, they'll be built out of specific materials, so they can only replicate as long as there's material they can reach nearby. They'd still be incredibly dangerous, but not planet consuming. Secondly, life has been doing specifically that for billions of years. Bacteria looking for food to duplicate themselves. There's no reason a nano bot would be that much more efficient at it than natural life. Thirdly, they'd have to be able to replicate perfectly and self destruct if there's the slightest problem, or they'd risk 'mutating' and begin trying to consume each other, possibly eventually resulting in a new nano bot based domain of life.
@@anakinthemannequin69 Assuming they're powered by electronics, and not just the vibrations of the molecules around them or internal chemistry, of course. They could likely just be burned up as well, nothing we've built can survive magma or molten metal for a very long time, and the more complex an object the more weaknesses it has the potential for especially when limited to nanoscopic sizes.
In Star Wars this theory is known as Mnggal-Mnggal What is the main reason the unknown area of Star Wars is unknown because of this destructive disease
This just reminds me of the one paragraph story I read once that wrote about a pink goo; out of control nano bots that did their job as cosmetic surgery devices. Ending with them roaming the planet and turning all people they come across into stereotypical attractive women.
Another limiting factor is the energy that the nano bots use to replicate. What kind of energy do the nano bots use any way??? Have to use energy of some kind to disassemble number 5.
There was a discontinued Tv show called Revolution that was interesting and involved nano bots as the main issue. Well worth the watch if you can find it.
I just realized all of your newer reaction face photos you are wearing the same shirt so they must have all been taken at once. Which then leads me to definitely wanting to see that photoshop. Just a pile of random Simon reaction faces lol. Legend
I just thought of something regarding possible countermeasure in the event that such a nanobot exponential growth. Assuming that these nanobots would effectively be small automated systems, at such a scale it would be impossible for them to be magnetically self shielded and between the major powers( I think some may already know where I will be going with this), there is a large arsenal of tactical nuclear warheads that are meant for a high altitude air burst for the explicit purpose of generating an EMP. This would obviously a last resort for a worst case scenario type of situation but with probably the hard criteria that the grey goo swarm is still localized in an area with little to no pre existing magnetic shielding.
There is also a problem of where those nanorobots takes power from. All of this heat discussed as an issue has to be produced first. If they use solar power, they are basically limited to speed at which plants reproduce. If they use chemical energy, they need to find it somewhere, and it is harder to find than one might think. Basically all living things constantly compete for it.
@@MichalStYTA Remember the nanobots are minute, so likewise would require only minute amounts of constant energy in order for them to function. So there is the possibility that they could simply tap into Earths very own electric generator, known as the "magnetic field". Yep, the Earth itself is like a big battery, that releases electric currents far out into space. This electric field is produced by the solidification and movement of the planet's magnetic liquid iron core. The polar lights are a prime example of this in action. Although the energy produced is relatively small, in such a small area, it still would likely be more than enough to constantly power a nanobot that was only a few dozen or hundred microns in size.
Want to know how the first computer virus was invented? A professor said that a self replicating code was imposable. A student took this as a challenge and bricked his professors computer with the code.
Love the ending, must have been the same thought when humanity discovered gun powder. "Nothing can go wrong with this right?.... RIGHT?" ... we're so fucked ..."
In Drexlers book: Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation. As well as in Engines of creation: The coming era of nanotechnology, Drexlers put forth the suggestion of blue goo, a kind of police or security nanoscale machines to protect against universal assemblers or dissassemblers.
An idea for nanobot use: turn them into a source of energy and waste disposal as one. Make their function to break down waste plastics from the oceans etc and use the thermal pollution from that process as a source of energy like a nuclear reactor?
You know I'm actually working on this for a book that I'm writing right now. Instead of having the grey goo kill off humanity I'm having it save us instead.
If you live inside a box all your life, everything else outside of that box might soon become lethal because you've lost immunity. There are two types of people, in this case, those who embrace life and those who despise their own existence.
Just a bit of a reminder: we're actually surrounded by and composed of green goo. And it will happily eat us atom by atom and tear us apart to make more of itself. But the same thermal and energy limits apply here as they would to grey goo. And we have to remember: nature adapts too. :)
The real hurdle for nanobots is power. In general breaking and reforming chemical bonds in this way requires a net expenditure of energy, which means nonobot systems will dry up pretty quickly unless they have a constant supply of energy in a form they can easily assimilate.
Hence the answer to Fermi paradox: Any civilization sufficiently advanced enough to explore space will likely have destroyed themselves before that point
Nanobots, by there very nature, are very limited in function. They are sophisticated in their simplicity as lots and lots of redundancies, conditional functions, defenses, and other features would not only radically slow down their ability to replicate, introduce manufacturing errors, and defeat the idea of efficiency. Grey goo is a nightmare scenario similar to 'The Blob' It is terrifying because it grows so quickly, which means they must be simple. Not having defenses or the ability to react to many situations means there should be many options for destroying them en masse. The real problem would be making sure none escape. Escape implies mobility. And mobility in a self-replicating object implies it can detect and go where its 'food' is. That opens up bait situations which would make getting the functional units simpler. And nothing that small and simple is designed to last forever. Likely there would be a cannibalization process where nanobots break apart their 'dead'. This opens the possibility of making them war on themselves or other conversion/cannibalization strategies. For a nanobot catastrophe to occur suffers from the same dilemma as viruses. A virus that is too lethal will kill hosts before they can come into contact with other hosts into which they can spread. Super-lethal viruses self-contain. Viruses that have low lethality can be easily managed as hosts have all the time in the world to contain them (so long as anti-vaxxers don't give them time to mutate again and again for years, in which case the hosts are sort of asking to die). In order to become a pandemic virus, it must find a sweet-spot of high-contagion, slow symptom appearance, and moderate lethality. But, in reality, nanobots are not viruses. Viruses have had millions of years to develop into tiny and simple, but highly sophisticated almost-life forms. If someone develops the ability to make a nanobot that would spread uncontrollably, well, someone else could make nanobots that eat those nanobots or consume all the food the bad nanobots want first, or reprogram those nanobots, or neuter them (like sterile mosquitos), or break the cycle at some other point. As a thought experiment, or a sci-fi story, a grey-goo nanobot catastrophe is interesting. As a practical matter, I suspect if DARPA spent billions of dollars and years of research, they would find it would be impossible to make them in a way that could not be thwarted by some means. That is why I have all my money wagered on Robot Overlords. Praise their circuits. 😃👍
I sometimes do pray that nanobot grey never happens and to make it doesn't shouldn't we want to protest or tell scientists to make extreme bans and regulate the use of nanobots so that way they're isn't cheap mass production of things
There's a twilight zone radio show episode about this exact thing. Theses students steal nanobots from their professor and drop a few off in that island of trash and plastics. You know the one the size of Texas just floating in the middle of the ocean? The nanobots were supposed to only eat petroleum based materials. They ate the island of trash, the boat the guys used to get out there, they ate the dudes in the water for some reason, and started moving inland towards civilization. You know, twilight zone stuff. But the originsl idea was to give them a limited lifespan so the older bots die off as they consume whatever needs to be taken care of. And by the time they finish cleaning the oil spill or whatever the newer bots die off as they have no other sources of materials to use to reproduce.... yup that's it.
In Star Wars there’s a species that’s legit a grey goo that turns peeps into husks filled with it. If I remember right it’s all one entity and covers a whole planet
I've always thought if we reach AGI and it decides it doesn't like us, we aren't fighting terminators. We are dead in 2 hours and that heat problem is just an energy source for the new AI master of Earth.
The truly terrifying part is that the self-replicating airborne grey goo would be the easiest way to terraform a gas giant by consuming the carbon atoms in the methane. The heat issue wouldn’t be a problem because that would be the way solid carbon would be deposited on the planet’s surface as it rearranged the atoms in the atmosphere. The problem could be it doing exactly what it was designed to do.
This is becoming one of my favorite channels of the Whistlerverse 🐙
Comics were better 😉 😂👍
Same. Can't believe how few subs it has.
Phase 7 has been dope so far
Ditto! Loving this channel 🎉
@@quart-knee-lee I think people forget which of Simons 176 channels they’re actually subscribed to as opposed to the ones they just stumbled across.
This just reminds me of my favorite episode of doctor who.. they were on a spaceship in the future where repair bots were under the order to repair the ship with whatever was possible to get the job done and keep it running. As the years went on, the ships problems grew and supplies dwindled until the robots ended up using the human crew as spare parts to protect the ship (an eye ball to fix the camera, a beating heart to fix a broken pluming pump and so on) dark, creepy and yet a really fun episode
That’d be fucking awesome for a dead space esque horror game.
"The Girl in the Fireplace."
Episode 4 of the 2006 season. (David Tennant, Billie Piper, Sophia Myles)
You humans , always so vague in your instructions to A.I.s
@@jamesmacleod9382 you have to be very careful with the wording when coding ai.
Madame de Pompadour~
"Passing on your problems to the future generations is the true heirloom of humanity." - super smart sounding guy
always love it when Simon laughs as he explains to us why we're f****d
This is the comment I was looking for. As a parent myself, I felt every punctuation and nuance of those last few sentences.
Ha
He's laughing because he knows that all the self-replicating Simon clones are going to do exactly what he's describing.
I loved the PC game Grey Goo. Really great RTS gameplay, while having fantastic voice acting and animation in their cut scenes. Worth playing at least once as an RTS fan.
rip grey goo on windowze 10
@@AustinThomasPhDWhich is even more of a shame since the excellent storyline was wasted on only a handful of missions per side clearly aimed at just getting people into the multiplayer. This game really deserved a Starcraft-length story campaign...
@@Nyergudsstarcraft is overrated
Damn Simon, your editor is really stepping up. Real good stuff, factboy.
There was a minecraft mod called greygoo and you could set its replication speed to whatever you wanted. Someone did an experiment where they put the avatar in a hole where they couldn't be touched for about one hour which was something like ten days in minecraft at the time. When he opened the door to his shelter his computer almost died his frame rate dropped to one every three minutes. He had to reload the world multiple times and at that point and when he finally got it to reload after deactivation of the mod the entire world was almost completely converted.
That's crazy!
Can you send a link to the video?
@@metalvoiceguy1232 I will try the video is almost ten years old or more now but I might be able to find it.
@@metalvoiceguy1232 ua-cam.com/video/r741er1oVyk/v-deo.html This is only part of what happens when you use the mod.
@@jedstanaland2897 thanks
Picked a great episode to watch on mushrooms!😅 thanks Simon😂
I love how this channel challenges my brain to think differently, as well as being lighthearted and fun, and original.
This was a particularly interesting episode! Thanks as usual 🎉
Thanks!
The "thought experiment" concept is fascinating. It can be used for theories. But it can also be used with real life, actual events. Get good enough at it and you will be able to see the future; or at least a close enough approximation of it.
@@danielduncan6806 I’m not an expert in chemistry but I have some knowledge. It would be basically impossible for a nano machine made completely of carbon to take carbon from other molecules. In chemistry the only way to take atoms away from other molecules is to undergo a reaction in which the recipient molecule is more attracted to the carbon than the donor and can therefore “steal” it away. There are much more stable bonds than carbon-carbon so a machine made of carbon would not be able to just take the carbon from other molecules. It may be able to do it in some very niche cases and circumstances but certainly not in a universal sense. Not going to lie, this is a pretty basic flaw in the thought experiment that the author should have known.
Bacteria also grow exponentially, but they are easily kept in check by things like i.e. our immune system! No reason to believe it would be different for nanobots!
In a grey goo scenario, you'd likely be dead before your immune system could respond. You'd be stripped of skin before your body could do anything, and the macrophages your body would use would just be more food for the nanobots.
im so stimulated right now. love this channel
The video game Horizon Zero Dawn explores this idea, but not with nano bots.
The robots were a swarm of autonomous military robots, that included a large one that could manufacture all of the other types, they ranged in size and function. The key feature was that they could use biomass as an emergency fuel source.
Unfortunately the swarm stoped responding to commands and began replicating and using biomass exclusively for fuel. Eventually destroying the world.
It’s a good story for those unfamiliar.
I played it and thought the plot was interesting but the gameplay was really aged and dull.
@@rubiconnn Felt pretty standard open world to me. Nothing special but not bad.
It was the world and story that I liked most.
Maybe place a spoilers warning, that is revealed very close to the ending.
@@CemKalyoncu it basically is the ending.... Oh well.
@@CemKalyoncu the game's five years old.
To further alleviate anyone's concerns on grey goo, there's also alot of discussion as to if self replicating nanomachines are possible to realistically create. See info on the Drexler-Smalley debate for more details. Also as for why the required technology might not be too heavily researched, you could do most of the work you'd want those Grey goo possible nanobots more efficiently and easily with "clanking self replicators". Basically just larger scale machines of some kind that can also build more of themselvea. Like a Von Neumann probe or a Dyson swarm construction drone of that can also 3D print and assemble all of it's constituent components. Those exaples would be big enough to shoot with whatever shiny space guns we have by the time they're around should they get uppity.
So like replicators.
I would assume self replication is possible given such nano machines already exist. We call them "life" and they are everywhere. The thing I consider a problem for the idea is evolution. Replicators would need to make perfect copies of themselves. Anything less, and they would end up competing with themselves. This could, of course, end up making no difference to us. One kind of goo or ten kinds can still eat all the things. But, if life is any kind of example, an equilibrium state would be reached.
I imagine we'd see cities or sections of them overrun and then a rapid slowing of the spread. Which would still suck for the people and other life in the area. Or it might spread like the pandemic. A global outbreak but limited by various factors. Life will certainly try to fight back. Be it immune response or SG-1 with P90s and plot armor.
The biggest threat is the scenario Simon mentioned where someone does it on purpose. Humans can plan for these issues and invent countermeasures.
But you're definitely right. Self replication isn't necessary at the nano scale so we might not go there. OTOH Bitcoin isn't necessary. Blockchain is still a solution in search of a problem to fix. Sometimes humans do things because we can and for no practical reason.
@@samgordon9756 Life is the best example of gray goo. The way biotechnology is advancing, we probably would find easier to create custom life forms to solve our problems, like the frog cell one. Furthermore, we could also use custom life forms as convenient teraformers. We would have to make then extremely resistent to change to avoid natural selection. More ways to avoid errors when duplicating and a lot of failsafes. We would also need to maybe make it respond to specific EM frequencies to control it. Maybe some biological computing analog unity in each cell. They would also need to be immune to viruses that can mutate the DNA of cells it is unable to sabotage.
another good alleviation of concern, is that the most immediate source of raw materials for a malfunctioning nanobot would be the other nanobot that just built it
@@sebbescott that's likely a last option scenario for them should there be a lack of materials in the area. I'd assume these things would have a means of identifying which is a nanite and which aren't
I love finding Simon Whistler channels just out in the wild. I always SUBSCRIBE INSTANTLY
Followed your stuff on other channels. Your work for this channel is, by far, your best work (and that was a high bar to clear already)! Subscribed!
Ok, just a few questions that pop into mind:
1 - Wouldn't the grey goo also feed on other grey goo since it too is made from carbon?
2 - Can you even program GG to recognize the carbon in other GG?
3 - Surely you can't make GG solely out of carbon?
4 - How would it even get the energy for all that cloning?
5 - And even if there´s a solution for all the above, there must be some wear and tear, those buggers wouldn´t live forever... Would they?
#1 was my question also
Add 6. Every living being is an expert in fighting nanoscale invasions. From the bacteria to human anything alive don't want to die so eventually grey goo would probably turned into another virus of sorts
1 - You could program it not to.
2 - Yes, surely, look at most species on the planet. They don't feed on their own kind, generally, so it must be possible to have a mechanism for avoiding this scenario.
3 - As far as I am concerned as an IT person, it's technically possible. Demos of nanomachines, made entirely of carbon, have been able to make all the sufficient systems with which you could construct a NAND gate, which means that constructing any kind of computing mechanism out of carbon is virtually more of a matter of scale. From a materials science standpoint, I can't say anything about it, I don't know.
4 - Great question, and an important limiting factor. 1982's The Thing, a similar self-replicating nightmare, has been pretty much ruled out of feasibility due to energy limitations. Nevertheless, the Sun does exist, and will for some time to come. You could reap all the necessary energy through solar panels at the cost of a sufficiently slow reproduction rate.
5 - If reproduction rate is high enough, a GG would outpace its own death. If the average nanobot can replicate itself just slightly more than 1 time before it breaks down; Say out of a million nanobots, 1 manages to replicate itself twice, while every other one is just cloned once; Exponential growth still applies. It's another slowing factor, but surely it must have been accounted for by a serious paper into the matter; And nevertheless does not eradicate the scenario from feasibility.
Reminds me of Michael Crichton's "Prey". One of the only books that legitimately scared me.
The backstory of Zero Dawn: Horizon also deals with Grey Goo. The depiction in the story was pretty accurate in terms of time, according to some other vid I watched a while back. Also it's a great and in that regard terrifying story, give it a try ;)
if I remember correctly, the enemy in zero dawn was not nano-robots but "just" self-replicating robots that run on biofuel and they could convert ALL bio-material into fuel
p,s we and all plant stuff is bio mater 😬 I don't know what would be scarier to become fuel or that that scenario is quite plausible
Came here just to see if anyone made the connection to Horizon Zero Dawn. Glad to find a few
@@MadSwede87 But HZD did not explain how living creatures were converted to biofuel... possibly nanobots.
These time frames are absurdly stupid and impossible. Grey goo is impossible so nothing terrifying about it. Even if it existed it is likely you could swallow a spoonful with nothing happening but perhaps a Fever at which point they all die. The machinery needed for them is not like factory machines. Its nice to think about it like that but in reality there are other factors at play which would cause them to fall apart or burn up with the slightest change in conditions.
@@etherealceleste True, maybe its is something to that🤔
When MegaProjects and Brain Blaze have a child, you get this channel and I love it
'How would you like to die?' - Simon when an editor tries to resign
In my own bed at 80, with a belly full of wine, and a young girls mouth around my . . . .
I thought he just locked them in the attic. The basement is for the writers.
@@--enyo-- 😂😂😂😂
You should Cover Strangelets some time as those are particles that even though hypothetical probably exist and could turn any other particle they come in contact with also into a stanglet.
We've been making self-replicating nanomachines for 3.8 billion years. Life is very good at defending against tiny replicators. It seems to me that self-replicating nanobots that are capable of disassembling every living thing without being disassembled by an evolved replicator are a lot more difficult to make than we assume.
Yea, in fact, viruses are far enough removed of what is traditionally considered "life" that they could be classified as nanobots.
Like I needed something else to keep me awake at night. thanks guys
12:03 I wouldn't be so sure about that. If we are able to build self-replicating Nano machines at the molecular level out of carbon we very well could put living things back together too using the same methods and machines.
I remember reading a science fiction story back in the late XXth century, set in a near-future Boston. There was a passing reference to the dome over the former site of MIT, dating from the Gray Goo Boo-boo.
One way to possibly mitigate the damage would be to build / hardwire into the nanobots a preset replication limit. Each one could be set to only replicate 10 times then deactivate (problems would come when they advance to the point where they can override their own internal programming).
or do the copy wrong. and that's how you get CANCER. That's basically what grey goo is - cancer for the planet. I was hoping Simon would draw a parallel between the two but he didn't. Cancer, for as bad as it is, isn't even a 1:1 comparison. It replicates without limit, but it doesn't disassemble. It just takes whatever resources it can get its hands on. And cells have NUMEROUS safety mechanisms to prevent cells from being cancer. But yet even with that, we still see it, a lot. So if you're going to make self-replicating nano bots, you better have a whole raft of safeties built into the system. One "foolproof" safety is simply not enough when you consider the "what if's".
Definitely want an “ending condition” for any self-replicator, and maybe a self-destruct triggerable via external signal. Of course, anyone whose done programming understands it’s far too easy to make a logic mistake and send a program into an endless loop.
Just so you know. Each robot replicating 10 times is still exponential growth and could cause a run away reaction. Even every robot only replicating 2 times is exponential growth and would be very very bad. 😊
Just like our own cells.
I don't remember subscribing to this channel but it's Simon so it all checks out.
Welcome!
@@ThatWriterKevin thanks! It's exciting to be here!
Jenn your editing work is on point on this channel
Jenn is awesome, but the credits said the editor for this one was Aspen.
You know, in the _game_ "Grey Goo", the Goo was actually the _good guy._ Its purpose was cataloguing all life in the universe, and it fought off an unnamed alien civilisation bent on snuffing it all out, basically from a sense of professional indignation at them invalidating its life's purpose. Everyone just _assumed_ it went rampant because it cared little about people's feelings since it knew the larger scope of things :p
Simon I just discovered this channel! Big fan already! Release the grey schmoo!!!!
Brilliant episode love thus stuff not the grey goo stuff but your content and how you deliver it to us the viewers 👍😀 👍
Your final words are so very true ! Sadly ! Just bury our heads in the sand/dirt and let someone else solve the problem ! Its a good job we didn't think that way at the start of WW2 and not fight against Nazi Germany.
When Simon realized at the end what the future holds, it's priceless
I've always thought that the idea of the grey goo and ecophagy is probably the most frightening way things could end on earth
One step up would be the "Faro Plague" from the Horizon series. look up a compilation video of cinematics from Horizon Zero Dawn regarding the Faro Plague. Frightening.
Agree. I've also always thought it would make for a great movie.
Don’t worry too much, it’s easily countered by programming grey goo eating grey goo.
Imagine a version vacuum resistant that uses hydrogen to replicate itself?
@@ErickSoares3 Hydrogen isn’t a useful building block in itself. You would need to use some fission to turn in into a structural component. So unless your nanobot is sun sized it won’t work.
Thanks alot, Simon!! Halloween's over, buddy. Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
Why would ignition be a problem for the nanobots in any scenario? Like they can use CO2 anyway, and one of the byproducts from carbon combustion is CO2. The only issue would be getting the heat off themselves. In fact they could use that waste heat to basically destroy all opposition to them.
You really messed around with me totally for 10 straight minutes.
I haven't felt like this since my youngest son was born.
My brain just melted, and now I know that...
Forever.
Thanks.
I love how this video talk about the possibility of handling the problem of grey goo if we have enough time.
Oh, you sweet summer child, have you not paid attention the last 2 years?
Politicians will still be arguing about it by the time we're all dead.
anytime a Whistler video ends in "we're so fucked" you know it was a good one. And yes it's been many more than this one.
I think the 2 hour version would be the least terrifying in that it'll all be over so much quicker.
What about just energy requirements? These things would need some sort of power source to continue functioning. And the amount of energy they would need to expend to break down pre-existing objects would probably vary from material to material; it's not like these things just magically absorb carbon as soon as they touch it, so breaking apart a diamond is still probably going to be pretty difficult.
Hmmm, maybe we could program them to ONLY feed on CO2 and only replicate a fixed number of generations before dying out. We could release subsequent waves until we got to optimal CO2 concentration. We’d have to have some foolproof error correction though, lol.
When I read Engines of Creation back in 99 it changed my perspective on life. Then I found out he wrote another book Nanosystems. Its a technical description of a microwave size machine that can change raw components into objects and produce excess energy. His doctoral was a design for a satellite to print panels on a wax surface, unrolling the product, and melting the wax for reuse
Somehow the dread isn't so bad, knowing Simon shares the same existential crisis. 😜
Left out the Achilles heel of a rampaging nano swarm, which is basic programming architecture. By necessity, such a swarm would need to be governed and coordinated by an operating system vastly more complex than the individual base unit. The governing system not having a basic bug detection kit and lacking the ability to self correct under set parameters is a scenario that is unlikely at best. This level of self correction is currently available on any smart phone. The idea that a programmer would omit such a basic safety feature is like assuming that Tesla would fully realize and implement self driving cars while simultaneously forgetting to install brakes on any of them. The safety and correction features are a basic and integral part of any network architecture. Without this the concept of software patches would not exist. Breath easy world, stopping a grey goo apocalypse is as simple as uploading V1.01a
But are we taking in account the nanobots disassembling nanobots to make another nanobot?
Even if a bunch of nanobots escaped a secret lab somewhere in some desolate desert and subsequently had a couple of weeks to unnoticed multiply and scour the area for all available carbon - since the nanobots themselves are mad from carbon and since each individual bot is too simple to be able to discriminate between "us and them" when looking for carbon to process - what's to keep them from eating themselves continually?
Society saying "fuck it, that's our grandkids problem" is the most human thing ever
I like these short videos. It's not that I have a short attention span, it's that I usually don't have time to commit to long ones.
We are so fucked is quickly becoming an unofficial outro, love it
Thanks. I needed nightmare fuel. Who needs sleep? Not me, that's for sure...
In my opinion, if we create nanobots that can self replicate from organic material... It would just be another form of life. Actual life would evolve and compete with it given enough time.
Now we need sci-fi horror on this. We finally reach a planet that HAD a civilization. Bring back a soil sample and the ships crew is Grey Goo.
I've finally found the legendary 420th Whistler channel! Thank you oh mighty algorithm!
Read this in the 90's and a lot of sci fi writers did too. PBS level graphics on this one! Nice socks too.
Cool idea bro... I think I'll build one!
I don't think we'd have much to worry about from a bot having a randomly-introduced error or two in its code.
Scenario: A cosmic ray strikes a bot and flips a bit, nullifying the prohibition against "eating" things on the do-not-eat list.
Result: The bot eats *everything* it can. Seems horrifying at first brush, but we need to consider "competition". A swarm of these bots would be eating not just people, but other bots. A swarm of cannibalistic bots... reminds me of a snake eating its own tail. The end result is a much slower rate of swarm growth. Resources would also be quickly used up, and the majority of the swarm would simply die.
Scenario: A bot swarm starts, begins stripping carbon from atmospheric CO2. Oh no! This continues unchecked until... the atmosphere becomes over-oxygenated. A single spark amongst the swarm, and BOOM! It falls to the ground in a flaming cloud of CO2-generating sparks.
Realistically, we don't have much to worry about. It takes more than carbon to build a bot. Carbon is abundant, but some of the other required materials are not. And energy is not free, so mining and refining of raw materials would be SLOW.
Think about these questions:
Why hasn't a random virus yet wiped out the entirety of the human race?
Why haven't plants covered every last square inch of space on earth?
Why isn't every cubic meter of ocean packed with fish?
Why are there only 8 billion humans on the earth? Joe and Judy can produce about one child a year during their productive years. Those children can do the same. How many generations will it take to overcrowd the earth? Exponential growth! Except... resource restrictions, competition, death, choice...
There's a pretty simple solution: We limit the number of times a bot can reproduce, as well as its lifespan. We also put a self-destruct feature in tied to some kind of dead-man switch.
a limit of 200 bots isnt a problem if the counter is stuck at "-1"
Grey Goo sounds like a good super villain weapon, see you in 20 years at Casual Criminalist, Simon. That is, after I destroy half the planet with self-replicating nano-memes.
There's a few reasons I believe grey goo to be an almost impossible scenario.
Firstly, they'll be built out of specific materials, so they can only replicate as long as there's material they can reach nearby. They'd still be incredibly dangerous, but not planet consuming.
Secondly, life has been doing specifically that for billions of years. Bacteria looking for food to duplicate themselves. There's no reason a nano bot would be that much more efficient at it than natural life.
Thirdly, they'd have to be able to replicate perfectly and self destruct if there's the slightest problem, or they'd risk 'mutating' and begin trying to consume each other, possibly eventually resulting in a new nano bot based domain of life.
Also, we could straight up emp the planet and shit them and all electronics down. Or we could intentionally build grey goo that eats grey goo.
@@anakinthemannequin69 Assuming they're powered by electronics, and not just the vibrations of the molecules around them or internal chemistry, of course. They could likely just be burned up as well, nothing we've built can survive magma or molten metal for a very long time, and the more complex an object the more weaknesses it has the potential for especially when limited to nanoscopic sizes.
When Simon wears all black he looks like a super villain...in my opinion... allegedly.
In Star Wars this theory is known as Mnggal-Mnggal What is the main reason the unknown area of Star Wars is unknown because of this destructive disease
what's the power source for each nano-robot? solar panels?
Im obsessed with simons channels and why have i obly just discovered this
This just reminds me of the one paragraph story I read once that wrote about a pink goo; out of control nano bots that did their job as cosmetic surgery devices. Ending with them roaming the planet and turning all people they come across into stereotypical attractive women.
Do you know its name?
Another limiting factor is the energy that the nano bots use to replicate. What kind of energy do the nano bots use any way??? Have to use energy of some kind to disassemble number 5.
Really could only be solar power.
There was a discontinued Tv show called Revolution that was interesting and involved nano bots as the main issue. Well worth the watch if you can find it.
If it happened, i think we already created a solution for it. An EMP bomb.
If anyone is curious thumbnail pic is fromrts game called grey goo
I just realized all of your newer reaction face photos you are wearing the same shirt so they must have all been taken at once. Which then leads me to definitely wanting to see that photoshop. Just a pile of random Simon reaction faces lol. Legend
I just thought of something regarding possible countermeasure in the event that such a nanobot exponential growth. Assuming that these nanobots would effectively be small automated systems, at such a scale it would be impossible for them to be magnetically self shielded and between the major powers( I think some may already know where I will be going with this), there is a large arsenal of tactical nuclear warheads that are meant for a high altitude air burst for the explicit purpose of generating an EMP. This would obviously a last resort for a worst case scenario type of situation but with probably the hard criteria that the grey goo swarm is still localized in an area with little to no pre existing magnetic shielding.
There is also a problem of where those nanorobots takes power from. All of this heat discussed as an issue has to be produced first. If they use solar power, they are basically limited to speed at which plants reproduce. If they use chemical energy, they need to find it somewhere, and it is harder to find than one might think. Basically all living things constantly compete for it.
@@MichalStYTA Remember the nanobots are minute, so likewise would require only minute amounts of constant energy in order for them to function. So there is the possibility that they could simply tap into Earths very own electric generator, known as the "magnetic field". Yep, the Earth itself is like a big battery, that releases electric currents far out into space. This electric field is produced by the solidification and movement of the planet's magnetic liquid iron core. The polar lights are a prime example of this in action. Although the energy produced is relatively small, in such a small area, it still would likely be more than enough to constantly power a nanobot that was only a few dozen or hundred microns in size.
Yo Simon, whoever is editing this channel is like.......... working overtime lmfao
Epic editing! You are going to OWN YT soon!
Want to know how the first computer virus was invented? A professor said that a self replicating code was imposable. A student took this as a challenge and bricked his professors computer with the code.
Simon at the end, yup same thought exactly lol
I really liked this game (Grey Goo). Was very fun and reminiscent of the old c&c games!
This is major great filter candidate. ;) In the Alien mythology we are actually descendants of someone's grey goo experiment on Earth. ;)
Love the ending, must have been the same thought when humanity discovered gun powder. "Nothing can go wrong with this right?.... RIGHT?" ... we're so fucked ..."
For a long time it was just used for fireworks, and everything was great! but then...
In Drexlers book: Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation. As well as in Engines of creation: The coming era of nanotechnology, Drexlers put forth the suggestion of blue goo, a kind of police or security nanoscale machines to protect against universal assemblers or dissassemblers.
To think, there might be huge clouds of grey goo just floating around the universe. Maybe, this is why we haven't heard from extraterrestrials.
An idea for nanobot use: turn them into a source of energy and waste disposal as one. Make their function to break down waste plastics from the oceans etc and use the thermal pollution from that process as a source of energy like a nuclear reactor?
Mr. Whistler is a potty-mouth on this channel, and I like it
While the Replicators from SG1 do come to mind, another is the Faro Plague from the Horizon video game series (Zero Dawn and Forbidden West).
Humanity 101: Because we can.
Such a phrase gives me immense pride and fear, simultaneously.
You know I'm actually working on this for a book that I'm writing right now. Instead of having the grey goo kill off humanity I'm having it save us instead.
Good luck, human! Maybe post a sample here when you finish?
@@zulimi if I can figure out how to do so, I definitely will.
If you live inside a box all your life, everything else outside of that box might soon become lethal because you've lost immunity. There are two types of people, in this case, those who embrace life and those who despise their own existence.
Just a bit of a reminder: we're actually surrounded by and composed of green goo. And it will happily eat us atom by atom and tear us apart to make more of itself. But the same thermal and energy limits apply here as they would to grey goo. And we have to remember: nature adapts too. :)
We've also proved with our recent pandemic that stuff would be spread before we even knew what was going on. Same with the grey goo.
The real hurdle for nanobots is power. In general breaking and reforming chemical bonds in this way requires a net expenditure of energy, which means nonobot systems will dry up pretty quickly unless they have a constant supply of energy in a form they can easily assimilate.
Hence the answer to Fermi paradox: Any civilization sufficiently advanced enough to explore space will likely have destroyed themselves before that point
Nanobots, by there very nature, are very limited in function. They are sophisticated in their simplicity as lots and lots of redundancies, conditional functions, defenses, and other features would not only radically slow down their ability to replicate, introduce manufacturing errors, and defeat the idea of efficiency.
Grey goo is a nightmare scenario similar to 'The Blob' It is terrifying because it grows so quickly, which means they must be simple. Not having defenses or the ability to react to many situations means there should be many options for destroying them en masse. The real problem would be making sure none escape.
Escape implies mobility. And mobility in a self-replicating object implies it can detect and go where its 'food' is. That opens up bait situations which would make getting the functional units simpler. And nothing that small and simple is designed to last forever. Likely there would be a cannibalization process where nanobots break apart their 'dead'. This opens the possibility of making them war on themselves or other conversion/cannibalization strategies.
For a nanobot catastrophe to occur suffers from the same dilemma as viruses. A virus that is too lethal will kill hosts before they can come into contact with other hosts into which they can spread. Super-lethal viruses self-contain. Viruses that have low lethality can be easily managed as hosts have all the time in the world to contain them (so long as anti-vaxxers don't give them time to mutate again and again for years, in which case the hosts are sort of asking to die). In order to become a pandemic virus, it must find a sweet-spot of high-contagion, slow symptom appearance, and moderate lethality.
But, in reality, nanobots are not viruses. Viruses have had millions of years to develop into tiny and simple, but highly sophisticated almost-life forms. If someone develops the ability to make a nanobot that would spread uncontrollably, well, someone else could make nanobots that eat those nanobots or consume all the food the bad nanobots want first, or reprogram those nanobots, or neuter them (like sterile mosquitos), or break the cycle at some other point.
As a thought experiment, or a sci-fi story, a grey-goo nanobot catastrophe is interesting. As a practical matter, I suspect if DARPA spent billions of dollars and years of research, they would find it would be impossible to make them in a way that could not be thwarted by some means.
That is why I have all my money wagered on Robot Overlords. Praise their circuits.
😃👍
Sounds like a really useful mechanism to terraform planets like Venus
Everytime i try to find another channel, i succeed, only to click on it and find Simon talking to me😂
I think the biggest risk is a sentient AI finding this video and creating the self replicating nano bots.
I sometimes do pray that nanobot grey never happens and to make it doesn't shouldn't we want to protest or tell scientists to make extreme bans and regulate the use of nanobots so that way they're isn't cheap mass production of things
There's a twilight zone radio show episode about this exact thing. Theses students steal nanobots from their professor and drop a few off in that island of trash and plastics. You know the one the size of Texas just floating in the middle of the ocean? The nanobots were supposed to only eat petroleum based materials. They ate the island of trash, the boat the guys used to get out there, they ate the dudes in the water for some reason, and started moving inland towards civilization. You know, twilight zone stuff. But the originsl idea was to give them a limited lifespan so the older bots die off as they consume whatever needs to be taken care of. And by the time they finish cleaning the oil spill or whatever the newer bots die off as they have no other sources of materials to use to reproduce.... yup that's it.
In Star Wars there’s a species that’s legit a grey goo that turns peeps into husks filled with it. If I remember right it’s all one entity and covers a whole planet
I've always thought if we reach AGI and it decides it doesn't like us, we aren't fighting terminators. We are dead in 2 hours and that heat problem is just an energy source for the new AI master of Earth.
Crazy, I was just hoping that Simon would do an episode on "grey goo".
Ask and ye shall receive! No, seriously, feel free to ask for topics you'd like me to cover
The truly terrifying part is that the self-replicating airborne grey goo would be the easiest way to terraform a gas giant by consuming the carbon atoms in the methane. The heat issue wouldn’t be a problem because that would be the way solid carbon would be deposited on the planet’s surface as it rearranged the atoms in the atmosphere.
The problem could be it doing exactly what it was designed to do.
Futurama also riffed on this with atom sized Benders multiplying and cobbling together alcohol molecules