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I think this is right but also missing a useful perspective. Most HN people are probably too young to remember that the nanotech post-scarcity singularity was
by foobiekr 1y ago
I think this is right but also missing a useful perspective.
Most HN people are probably too young to remember that the nanotech post-scarcity singularity was right around the corner - just some research and engineering way - which was the widespread opinion in 1986 (yes, 1986). It was _just as dramatic_ as today's AGI.
That took 4-5 years to fall apart, and maybe a bit longer for the broader "nanotech is going to change everything" to fade. Did nanotech disappear? No, but the notion of general purpose universal constructors absolutely is dead. Will we have them someday? Maybe, if humanity survives a hundred more years or more, but it's not happening any time soon.
There are a ton of similarities between nanotech-nanotech singularity and the moderns LLM-AGI situation. People point(ed) to "all the stuff happening" surely the singularity is on the horizon! Similarly, there was the apocalytpic scenario that got a ton of attention and people latching onto "nanotech safety" - instead of runaway AI or paperclip engines, it was Grey Goo (also coined in 1986).
The dynamics of the situation, the prognostications, and aggressive (delusional) timelines, etc. are all almost identical in a 1:1 way with the nanotech era.
I think we will have both AGI and general purpose universal constructors, but they are both no less than 50 years away, and probably more.
So many of the themes are identical that I'm wondering if it's a recurring kind of mass hysteria. Before nanotech, we were on the verge of genetic engineering (not _quite_ the same level of hype, but close, and pretty much the same failure to deliver on the hype as nanotech) and before that the crazy atomic age of nuclear everything.
Yes, yes, I know that this time is different and that AI is different and it won't be another round of "oops, this turned out to be very hard to make progress on and we're going to be in a very slow, multi-decade slow-improvement regime, but that has been the outcome of every example of this that I can think of.
- quesera 1y agoI won't go too far out on this limb, because I kind of agree with you... but to be fair -- 1980s-1990s nanotech did not attract this level of investment, nor was it visible to ordinary people, nor was it useful to anyone except researchers and grant writers. It seems like nanotech is all around us now, but the term "nanotech" has been redefined to mean something different (larger scale, less amazing) from Drexler's molecular assemblers.
- foobiekr 1y agoInvestment was completely different at the time and interest rates played a huge part of that. VC also wasn't that old in 86.
- jonfromsf 1y agoEvery consumer has very useful AI at their fingertips right now. It's eating the software engineering world rapidly. This is nothing like nanotech in the 80s.
- Yizahi 1y agoSure. But fancy autocomplete for a very limited industry (IT) plus graphics generation and a few more similar items, are indeed useful. Just like "nanotech" coating of say optics or in the precise machinery or all other fancy nano films in many industries. Modern transistors are close to nano scale now, etc. The problem is that the distance between a nano thin film or an interesting but ultimately rigid nano scale transistor and a programmable nano level sized robot is enormous, despite similar sizes. Same like the distance between an autocomplete heavily relying on the preexisting external validators (compilers, linters, static code analyzers etc.) and a real AI capable of thinking is equally enormous.
- tbrownaw 1y ago> Did nanotech disappear? No, but the notion of general purpose universal constructors absolutely is dead. Will we have them someday? Maybe, if humanity survives a hundred more years or more, I thought this was a "we know we can't" thing rather than a "not with current technology" thing?
- foobiekr 1y agoSpecific cases are probably impossible, though there's always hope. After all, to ue the example the nanotech people loved: there are literal assemblers all around you. Whether we can have singular device that can build anything (probably not - energy limits and many many other issues) or factories that can work on atomic scale (maybe) is open, I think. The idea of little robots was kind of visibly silly even at the peak. The idea of scaling up LLMs and hoping is .. pretty silly.