Do you think the Nanotechnology could be used as a weapon... do you think robots will ever gain there own sentience?

Assuming we were able to make Nanites, they could be used for many purposes in war, from assains to military intelgence if we could transport the nanites to the target(a person, place, etc.) we could be able to do what ever we wanted with the nanites.


I believe with a few years and a ton of work we could make a AI even if it is only partialy sientient, but untill we do that robots/computers will reman under our controll. TG *thinks of The Matrix and shudders*

~Empath(The Shadow Protectorate)

The matrix is about as implausible as it gets, great film, but it isn't going to happen.

I think computers will eventually develop sentience, if only through sheer force. There's a long way to go but the progress we have made already has been amazing.

I think the greatest possibility for nanotechnology in war is intelligence gathering. They have already developed small nanomachines that have limited intelligence gathering capability and using small lasers are able to transmit that data back to a receiver.

If you can build distributed intelligence into them and 'sparm' capabilities then they could really work well.

Originally posted by ChildOfTheMind
Do you think the Nanotechnology could be used as a weapon... do you think robots will ever gain there own sentience?

A gallon of water can be used as a weapon...whynot nanotechnology? Have you heard of biological and chemical weapons? They are in the size of molecules...very soon we can have viruses specific to groups of people - it is easy and cheap. We are testing biological/chemical quantum computers, so why think in terms of silicon chips and conventional motors?

It depends of what a robot looks like or made of... but they will never be called man or woman by definition anymore than you call your car a horse (though many people used to refer the model T as a buggy in those days!).

More of an editorial comment here...that's two different questions completely. Look, people have limited time to reply to comments, and the more focused the thread, the more likely it will get quality debate.

whether robots can be used , and whether robots can ever think, are 2 different things. Nanorobotics can be used in a war, i dont think now, but im sure its a perfectly plausible idea, However, I do not think they would allow these nanobots to have sentient thoughts (even if they could, i mean they are quite small, hard enough just to make them i would imagine) because they are simply too dangerous

We're years of anything approaching AI's even in the largest supercomputers so I doubt we will ever be able to get AI into something the size of a nanobot. You would need some quite advanced sensors as well for an AI to be of any use and we couldn't get these in a nanobot in my opinion.

Nano-robots. We're talking atom-sized robots here, right? And I think I read somewhere that they would theoretically be able to change or at least affect the molecules and/or atoms of an object, thereby turning anything into anything else. Needless to say, this would allow you to make unlimited numbers of nano-bots, and in war, well, you could turn an entire opposing civilization into oxygen or something. If that whole manipulating atoms thing is possible. I think I got it from Robert J. Sawyer.

Gurglo

Think StarTrek....

THINK FOOD REPLICATOR.....:D

They aren't as small as atoms. The smallest they will be is that of a large molecule. At the moment they are still about the size of a grain of sand.

Food replication may be possible. But it would require a lot of power for nanobots to strip the appropriate atoms from the environment. You would probably need fusion power before food 'replicators' where common place.

If the nanobots have the force strong enough to create nucleus of an atom, they could build any element from hydrogen. To make food, one mostly needs Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen molecules with some Sodium, Potassium etc in very low quantities. That way the bots don't have to be designed to create nucleus which needs atomic power.

For example to make sugar, one only needs

Carbon 12 parts
Oxygen 11 parts
Hydrogen 22 parts

Have drop one nanite on your enemy and watch it reproduce and eat them alive. Hopefully it stops there and dosnt eat the planet. "grey goo" scenareo.

The sort of nanotechnology that may be possible in the foreseeable future will not have the strength in its nanomanipulator arms to force protons together to form new atoms;
nevertheless a working nano replicator and nanoscale machinery would be able to use the elements already in the environment to manufacture explosives, say, or monitoring devices.

These things will still be bound by the rules of chemistry and physics...
but those rules will allow for some remarkable and dangerous things to be achieved, often on a scale too small for the human eye to detect.
__________________
SF worldbuilding at
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"child of the mind"

piror to your statment:

do you think the nanotechnology could be used as a weapon....do you think robots will ever gain their own sentience?

in order to innovate such task:

{1} combining the human function with automatic neuro assemblation.

{2} the machine body parts {robotic function}

anymore information and i will be giving you the code {?!}