LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“It’s time for a self-reproducing machine” by Carl Feynman


Listen Later

I've wanted to build a self-reproducing machine since I was 17. It's forty-five years later, and it has finally become feasible. (I've done a few other things along the way.) I'm going to describe one such device, and speculate as to its larger implications. It's a pretty detailed design, which I had to come up with to convince myself that it is feasible. No doubt there are better designs than this.

The Autofac

Here's a top-level description of the device I'm thinking of. It's called an Autofac, which is what they were called in the earliest story about them. It looks like a little metal shed, about a meter cubed. It weighs about 50 kilograms. There's a little gnome-sized door on each end. It's full of robot arms and automated machine tools. It's connected to electricity and by WiFi to a data center somewhere. It has a front door [...]

---

Outline:

(00:31) The Autofac

(02:24) The software

(05:59) Economics

(10:37) Next Steps

(13:37) The Baffin Island Plan

---

First published:

August 7th, 2024

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rQxrSRPJGmksGjK8z/it-s-time-for-a-self-reproducing-machine

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

LessWrong (30+ Karma)By LessWrong


More shows like LessWrong (30+ Karma)

View all
Making Sense with Sam Harris by Sam Harris

Making Sense with Sam Harris

26,409 Listeners

Conversations with Tyler by Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Conversations with Tyler

2,387 Listeners

The Peter Attia Drive by Peter Attia, MD

The Peter Attia Drive

7,908 Listeners

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas by Sean Carroll | Wondery

Sean Carroll's Mindscape: Science, Society, Philosophy, Culture, Arts, and Ideas

4,131 Listeners

ManifoldOne by Steve Hsu

ManifoldOne

87 Listeners

Your Undivided Attention by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, The Center for Humane Technology

Your Undivided Attention

1,457 Listeners

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg by All-In Podcast, LLC

All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

9,042 Listeners

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST) by Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

87 Listeners

Dwarkesh Podcast by Dwarkesh Patel

Dwarkesh Podcast

388 Listeners

Hard Fork by The New York Times

Hard Fork

5,432 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,216 Listeners

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis by PHD Ventures

Moonshots with Peter Diamandis

474 Listeners

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups by Conviction

No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups

122 Listeners

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast by swyx + Alessio

Latent Space: The AI Engineer Podcast

75 Listeners

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley by BG2Pod

BG2Pod with Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley

458 Listeners