There's no guarantee it's possible. Self-replicating molecules don't necessarily have to be hydrocarbons suspended in water inside of a semi-permeable lipid mem

There's no guarantee it's possible. Self-replicating molecules don't necessarily have to be hydrocarbons suspended in water inside of a semi-permeable lipid membrane, but that particular solution came about because of conditions that are needed: - Some multipolar molecules that could attract or repel each other and initiate both hydrogen bonds and covalent bonds. - Movement through some kind of medium not as chaotic as gas. - A boundary between self and everything else. Industrial processes to create machines don't lend themselves to this kind of bottom-up model as they now stand. It's not at all clear that etched silicon at all is the right medium of computation if we want it to be self-replicating. Coming up with something else is a hell of an ask and a hell of a handwave, though. It would also entail getting rid of the entire impetus of Moore's law and the reason futurolists like this ever thought there would be a singularity in the first place. Other than transistor density on a silicion die, I'm not sure any other technology has ever shown consistent long-term exponential growth at some reasonably fixed exponent.