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Say there's a class of objects that we want to prohibit to 3D printers. If not guns, then some WMD that meets whatever your risk threshold is. How, technically,

Say there's a class of objects that we want to prohibit to 3D printers. If not guns, then some WMD that meets whatever your risk threshold is. How, technically, do we accomplish that? There wouldn't seem to be any algorithm that could recognize any part that could be assembled into a device. A gun for instance can take on almost infinite forms and be divided into arbitrary unrecognizable modules. We could enforce pre-approval by a government engineer of any part that may possibly become such a device. But such an engineer would have to generate a large amount of false positives to be at all effective. And the requirement for skilled human intervention would make it slow and expensive. Bottom line, if there exists a device that you insist must be prohibited, then you will want to ban the free use of 3D printers that can make it. So what's that threshold for you? Keep in mind that a box cutter was used as a WMD, killing thousands. Do we ban 3D printers that can make a box cutter? Let's posit a lower limit of a box cutter and an upper limit of a fusion bomb. Are gunpowder projectile devices the right compromise? How dangerous does a printable device have to be before we must stand athwart technology, yelling Stop?

ReverseCold 8y ago
2D Printers have a feature like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation
- electrograv 8y ago
  That only works for a fixed set of items you specifically design. There is an infinite design variety of 3D-printable weapons or other dangerous items, so to prevent them all from being printed, you’d need to outright ban 3D printing. There’s really no other way — even if we had a hypothetical omniscient AI — because you can already construct weapons from a number of harmless existing parts with nonviolent uses, there’s no way of banning ALL possible weapon parts from being printed without also banning everything. And this isn’t even getting into inevitable circumvention of any such limitations placed on 3D printers. The only way to entirely prevent the construction of weapons is to build everything around us out of jello or styrofoam, and box everyone inside this soft padded universe permanently. But then I bet you even then someone will figure out how to terrorize others with the tools at hand; even if all they can do is hold you down and smother you in jello, someone, somewhere will do it, and copycats will appear everywhere thereafter.

ReverseCold 8y ago

2D Printers have a feature like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EURion_constellation

electrograv 8y ago
That only works for a fixed set of items you specifically design. There is an infinite design variety of 3D-printable weapons or other dangerous items, so to prevent them all from being printed, you’d need to outright ban 3D printing. There’s really no other way — even if we had a hypothetical omniscient AI — because you can already construct weapons from a number of harmless existing parts with nonviolent uses, there’s no way of banning ALL possible weapon parts from being printed without also banning everything. And this isn’t even getting into inevitable circumvention of any such limitations placed on 3D printers. The only way to entirely prevent the construction of weapons is to build everything around us out of jello or styrofoam, and box everyone inside this soft padded universe permanently. But then I bet you even then someone will figure out how to terrorize others with the tools at hand; even if all they can do is hold you down and smother you in jello, someone, somewhere will do it, and copycats will appear everywhere thereafter.