Herself’s Artificial Intelligence

I ran across a story a while back on Engadget, Researchers create a nanobot-controlling brain, and realized I hadn’t looked to see where we are in nanotechnology in a long time.

Nano is a prefix representing one one-billionth of something, a nanobot is a robotic device less than 1 billionth of a meter in size. One billionth of a meter is enough length to hold about 7 hydrogen atoms. In actuality, nanotechnology refers to just about any technology that is ultra-tiny in size.

Early hopes were to develop nanobots that could be injected into humans to cure what ails us. So far that hasn’t happened. But some small progress is being made using nanomachines to kill cancer cells as medication delivery systems.

Some recent sci-fi books ( ‘Next’, ‘Post Singular’) have brought up some of the scarier possibilities nanobots bring to us. What happens if the nanoparticles behave like swarms? What happens if those swarms turn deadly? Or how do we protect ourselves from self-replicating nanoparticles that turn out to be dangerous?

Most recently nanosilver has been in the news. Its value is in its antibacterial properties. The hope was it would be added to clothing, laundry detergent and in medical devices. Not too long after nano-silver stories hit the main news media nano-silver pollution stories hit the news. You may also remember a few Y2K nutcases who dyed themselves blue drinking silver. If nano-silver contaminates the water supply what happens? We just don’t know yet? Will we all become smurfs?

Like any new technology bringing great promise, nanotechnology also brings great dangers. Until we have some progress on usable nanotechnology for the masses the concerns are likely to dampen interest in nanotechnology and government funding. So here’s hoping for some useful nanobots in our near future.

More information:
Are nanobots on their way?
Howard Lovy’s NanoBot ( blog )
International Society of Nanoscale Science, Computation and Engineering
Nanularity
Nanosoccer debuts at RoboCup 2007
International Nanotechnology and Society Network
Nanotechnology portal
A Billionth of a Meter is a Big Deal
I, nanobot

See also:
Shape shifting robots escape Lost set
Living Neural Net Created