Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Green goo is plausible, published by anithite on April 18, 2023 on LessWrong.

TLDR:If an AI kills all the humans how does it power the datacenters/replace the human economy? Green Goo. (IE:bioengineering)

Natural biotech is amazing

Evolution is dumb and slow

Very simple strategies (EG:vine that climbs a tree and squeezes) are "innovative" and work well in nature.

Designed organisms could very quickly reproduce and then provide necessary resources (EG:biological solar panels to power data centers)

TLDR end

In response to: grey-goo-is-unlikely

Overview of existing natural biology:

Minimum doubling time for

Plants: single digit days

Algae: 1.5 days (ideal conditions)

E.Coli: 20 minutes (nutrient rich conditions)

No single organism (humans aside) has taken over the biosphere because evolution is slow and dumb.

Human agriculture is based on: plant sub 1 gram seeds, (water, pesticides/herbicides, fertilizer etc.) , collect 1 kg+ plants a few months later. Biology has absurd growth rates.

Invasive species show the implications. A naive biosphere stands no chance against an intelligent opponent with real biotechnology.

Kudzu, "the vine that ate the south"

Intelligence allows adapting strategies much more quickly. Humans can design vaccines faster than viruses can mutate. A population of well coordinated humans will not be significantly preyed upon by viruses despite viruses being the fastest evolving threat.

Intelligence + ability to bioengineer organisms --> can create unlimited invasive species much more capable than anything natural

groups of invasive species can be symbiotic

IE:after the bugs eat all the plants, replace all the plants with an invasive plant of your own

invasive species can have a simple handshake based backdoor to allow resource exchange and control

EG: bug/plant chemical handshake to allow bug to get nectar so it can stick around and eat any competitor plants

EG: biochemical signal to allow collecting sugar rich sap for other purposes

invasive species can allow "updates" via engineered in viral backdoor

EG: specific protein to identify "update virus" carrying new genetic material

If a fungus figures out how to eat your plant give all existing plants a new antifungal to secrete

Current life is sub-optimal

all cells in an organism have full copy of genome

increases cancer risk (a cell that doesn't have genes for DNA copying can't become cancerous)

copying takes much longer (Human cell replication time is 24 hours, 8 of which is DNA copying. Similarly complex eukaryotes like yeast can double in under 2 hrs)

organisms are grown from a single parent cell repeatedly splitting and differentiating via complex biochemical state machines.

printing an organism from already grown differentiated cells or blocks of cells would be much faster

but biology can't build such a printer and translate designs to the new format

multi cellular organisms can't adopt/steal new biochemistry

human ancestor organisms lost vitamin C synthesis and never got it back despite later problems with scurvy. Humans had to find food sources to deal with missing biochemistry. Many organisms use symbiotic bacteria with significant efficiency gains in keeping them on task.

Hypothetical very invasive shoggoth/kudzu type organism

Core capabilities:

constructed from modular components

does not grow a leaf, sends leaf parts via internal transport network to be assembled on site

dedicated networks for distribution of water and high concentration sap (think honey)

sap is concentrated and low in phosphorus, sulfur and micronutrients, inhibits bacterial growth

water contains some inorganic micro-nutrients

sap and water can be combined inside parts to run normal biology

general purpose transportation system to move encapsulated blobs of stuff

EG: inorganic nutrients, excavated dirt/rock, matter to be dig...