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. Stories of run-amok robots like the Borg, replicating or mutating
to escape from the ethical constraints imposed on them by their creators, are well
established in our science fiction books and movies. It is even possible that
self-replication may be more fundamental than we thought, and hence harder - or
even impossible - to control. A recent article by Stuart Kauffman inNature titled
"Self-Replication: Even Peptides Do It" discusses the discovery that a
32-amino-acid peptide can "autocatalyse its own synthesis." We don't know how
widespread this ability is, but Kauffman notes that it may hint at "a route to
self-reproducing molecular systems on a basis far wider than Watson-Crick
base-pairing."7
In truth, we have had in hand for years clear warnings of the dangers inherent in
widespread knowledge of GNR technologies - of the possibility of knowledge alone
enabling mass destruction. But these warnings haven't been widely publicized;
the public discussions have been clearly inadequate. There is no profit in
publicizing the dangers.
The nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) technologies used in 20th-century
weapons of mass destruction were and are largely military, developed in
government laboratories. In sharp contrast, the 21st-century GNR technologies
have clear commercial uses and are being developed almost exclusively by
corporate enterprises. In this age of triumphant commercialism, technology - with
science as its handmaiden - is delivering a series of almost magical inventions
that are the most phenomenally lucrative ever seen
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