May Newsletter: Molecular Nanotechnology

Dear friends,

It has been a productive month for GCRI, with new papers by several of our affiliates. Here, I would like to highlight one by Steven Umbrello and myself, on the topic of molecular nanotechnology, also known as atomically precise manufacturing (APM).

At present, APM exists only in a crude form, such as the work recognized by the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. However, it may be able to revolutionize manufacturing, making it inexpensive and easy to produce a wide range of goods, resulting in what leading expert Eric Drexler refers to as “radical abundance”. However, the APM revolution could also have major downsides, such as the capacity to make more and powerful weapons.

In our new paper “Evaluating Future Nanotechnology: The Net Societal Impacts of Atomically Precise Manufacturing”, Umbrello and I assess the effects of APM across the full range of important sectors. We find net benefits from increases in material wealth, improved environmental protection, enabling nuclear disarmament, and space travel. We find net harms from rogue actor violence and AI. We also assessed surveillance but found an ambiguous net effect. We tentatively find the overall effect to be net beneficial, with the largest effect for the environment: APM could be the breakthrough technology that solves climate change. However, there is a lot of uncertainty, and the balance could easily go the other way.

Working on this paper, I was struck by how little attention APM is getting, especially compared to other future technologies like AI and geoengineering. I hope that our new paper will help draw attention and inspire more work on this important topic.

Sincerely,
Seth Baum, Executive Director

General Catastrophic Risk

GCRI Junior Associate Matthijs Maas co-authored a paper with Hin-Yan Liu and Kristian Cedervall Lauta, “Governing Boring Apocalypses: A New Typology of Existential Vulnerabilities and Exposures for Existential Risk Research” forthcoming in Futures.