Nuclear proliferation is like our training wheels for all the dangerous techs that are to come. If you are worried about it, look into how world governance works, how international norms are agreed on, and take a partisan stance against the parties that block the ability to do such things.
Nuclear proliferation: so far so good.
Ozone layer destruction: disaster adverted
CO2 limitations: we would have solved that by now without GWB suddenly deciding that disbelieving in climate change was now a respectable policy position.
> The destruction that nuclear weapons can cause is nothing compared to the potential destruction from self-replicating machines
I think you overestimate the speed at which this will come. We probably could, today, make a self replicating machine from raw materials but it would be the size of a factory and would have a replication cycle of a few months. Going from self-replication to grey-goo will take some time, hopefully we can prepare to it.
And at every step of the short way, people smugly displaying their cool: 'Oh, primitive luddites and their unfounded fear of the wonders of tech. We've been living in Fukushima for 100 years, just build the damn nuclear plant on the seashore already. What could possibly go wrong? A tsunami? That's medieval superstition.'.
Took all of 25 years for a battery powered tablet to be more powerful than a room-sized supercomputer, MFLOP for MFLOP.
Nuclear proliferation: so far so good.
Ozone layer destruction: disaster adverted
CO2 limitations: we would have solved that by now without GWB suddenly deciding that disbelieving in climate change was now a respectable policy position.
> The destruction that nuclear weapons can cause is nothing compared to the potential destruction from self-replicating machines
I think you overestimate the speed at which this will come. We probably could, today, make a self replicating machine from raw materials but it would be the size of a factory and would have a replication cycle of a few months. Going from self-replication to grey-goo will take some time, hopefully we can prepare to it.