Magnetic swarm intelligence of mass-produced, programmable microrobot assemblies
cell.com
cell.com
Particularly the chapter called "Lauda's hypothesis" about the evolution of the planet's 'necrosphere' of self-organizing insect-like machines.
Curiously magnetism also plays a role in the book.
It's from 1963.
Lem was always eerily accurate with many of his futurist ideas. Even though he didn't want to be seen as a futurist but just as a sci-fi author.
"Weapon systems of the 21st century"[2] is another one of those of his works. Written in 1986 it predicts satellite-mounted use of lasers and 'synsects' (synthetic insects) with swarm intelligence. It also predicts that powerful AI is not needed but (superior) swarm intelligence is enough for battlefield superiority.
I dunno if the latter is even available in English but I guess nowadays you can just ask an LLM to translate the Polish original or the very good German translation to English, if you want to read it. :)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible
[2] https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffensysteme_des_21._Jahrhu...
Still, think of the cool robots we’ll get just before the end!
Self-replicating nanobots alone wouldn't cause the end of the world. To end the world you really need something that can consume resources many times faster than the entire biosphere combined- without forgetting that the biosphere includes us.
Self replication itself does not spell a crisis. It would have to be efficient, self-directed and most importantly, fast.
> In the Nevada desert, an experiment has gone horribly wrong. A cloud of nanoparticles—micro-robots—has escaped from the laboratory. This cloud is self-sustaining and self-reproducing. It is intelligent and learns from experience. For all practical purposes, it is alive.
I think that we are a long way from this level of nanobots - we don’t even have a regular robot that is somewhat self sustaining (e.g. charges itself with solar power) - so we probably won’t need to lose hair over this anytime soon…
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https://chatgpt.com/share/676e293f-f51c-8007-b07a-2cb9d89e9a...
So maybe it makes sense that our political and economic leaders have false confidence that "everything will be fine, it always has been for me".
The classes of people on the bottom are usually not numerous nor educated enough to cause a real issue. And if you get really lucky, the hierarchy is somewhat based in ethnicity. People will fight vehemently to support such structures.
Taking advantage of these sorts of motivations has worked to organize and control human societies for millennia. There is absolutely no reason for elites to think it will fail now.