Podcast #14: Replicating Machines

“The real problem is not whether machines think, but whether men do.”–B.F. Skinner

http://www.andertoons.com

Researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada have unveiled an ambitious project.  They are attempting to develop a 3D printer that can make copies of itself.  A replicating machine.  Why would anyone do something like that?  In a word: space.  It’s difficult, dangerous and expensive to launch mass of any kind into space.  If lunar and asteroid mining are ever to become a reality, let alone colonization of Mars, the ability to use materials in situ to construct many automata, from an initial compact package, would be paramount to affordability and perhaps even viability.  Is this possible?  No less a personage than  John von Neumann said that it is–and supposedly proved it mathematically.  What are the challenges, can we control them if we make them, and what happens if we can’t control them?  This is the…