[extropy-chat] self replicating machine ....

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Jan Gruber <bchjg at nus.edu.sg> wrote:
> I thought this bit of BBC tech news might be of interest - not sure
> how the electronic components are supposed to be replicated though. I
> seem to remember that this was discussed here some time ago - anybody
> know what is the state of the art with this ?

The electronic components - specifically, the microprocessors - are
indeed the stumbling points.  Simple mechanics can self-replicate, if
guided appropriately, but so far no one has been able to make the
information carrying bits - again, the microprocessors -
self-replicate.  Perhaps this could be done if the machine was made
with large-scale, relatively slow processors that could be built with,
say, welding rods laying down circuit traces instead of lithography of
any sort, but so far no one has done such.  (Besides, there are
arguments about what constitutes the "raw materials" that any
self-replicator would have to consume.  One obviously can't build a
metal arm without metal to work with, and perhaps one could argue for
having a non-replicating smelting plant to refine metal from ore so the
self-rep-ers wouldn't have to replicate said plant just to reproduce
themselves, with more plants perhaps being constructed after many
generations of self-rep-ers to increase the overall population growth
rate.  Some are extending this to claim that microprocessors also count
as "raw materials" for the usual things this kind of machine would be
useful for, ignoring the fact that an advanced microprocessor fab is
much much harder to build than a simple smelting plant.)