Let Us Prey
The menace of nanotechnology in storytelling and science
C. Christopher Hook
March 1, 2003
Michael Crichton's new novel, Prey, is another of his cautionary tales about humankind's technological hubris. When greed, ambition, arrogance, and an all-too-prevalent ignorance mix with new technology that we lack sufficient wisdom to employ, disaster is bound to follow. Instead of genetics and dinosaurs (Jurassic Park) or extraterrestrial microbes (The Andromeda Strain), humans get their comeuppance this time from a nasty combination of nanotechnology and artificial life.
Like many of Crichton's novels, Prey is really a movie concept preparing for the big screen. Computer-generated images of deadly swarms of nanoparticles, a menacing slow pan of a high-tech plant standing in stark contrast to the surrounding desert, the typecast actors who one-dimensionally populate—and are predictably sacrificed—in Crichton's stories: all this must be dancing in the head of a filmmaker even now.
But in fairness, Crichton doesn't seem to strive for high or thoughtful art. An enormously gifted storyteller with an instinct for hot-button issues, he seeks both to entertain and to scare us into considering prospectively the new technologies we are uncritically creating and embracing. Indeed, in one of the few novels this reviewer has encountered with an author's introduction, Crichton indicates his sincere concern about self-replicating, potentially autonomous, technology.
He is certainly not alone in these concerns. In a world of increasing techno-utopianism, we need blunt reminders that we aren't as smart as we think we are. But to have an actual impact on our thinking and on public discussion, the message must be delivered with credibility, and this is where Prey fails. Indeed, because Crichton flagrantly oversteps himself on several critical issues, many members of the nanotech community have dismissed the book outright, missing the legitimate concerns otherwise raised.
Nanotechnology involves engineering at the nanoscale level—that is, one-billionth of a meter—and manipulating matter at the atomic and molecular level. Nanotech is a rapidly growing area of investigation and investment. In 2003, the U.S. government will commit nearly one billion dollars in support for nanoscale research and development through the National Nanotechnology Initiative (www.nano.gov), including funds committed via the Department of Defense to the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (hence Crichton's premise of dod support for the original project of the developers in Prey). Most of the research in nanotech at present is committed to materials processing and development of nanoscale electronic devices, such as carbon nanowires, which will dramatically reduce the size of electronic components, facilitating the development of wearable computers and other ubiquitous forms of computing.
Others, however, are looking at using already existing nanoscale machinery, the components of living cells and viruses, in new and human-directed ways. For example, investigators at Cornell devised a way to attach a metal propeller to an enzyme critical to energy utilization inside living cells to create nanoscale motors. At the end of 2002, Joseph Jacobson at mit reported work in which gold nanoparticles were attached to a specific enzyme. The gold particle served as an antenna for a radio-frequency signal which could turn the enzyme function on and off at will. At the same time another group has published results using bacteria to produce a specific enzyme that will be used in the production of smaller electronic devices. Crichton's human antagonists similarly used bacteria to begin the production of the nanobots. This so-called "bottom-up" approach to nanoscale engineering is a very logical and cost-effective tool. After all, the most efficient molecular factories we know about are living cells.
We also see examples of more complex structures and organelles assembling themselves from their component parts in nature all the time. Thus far Crichton is on track with reality. But it is from here on that the controversy begins. Crichton proceeds to develop the nanorobotic assembler envisioned in the writings of Eric Drexler (accessible online at www.foresight.org), which have inspired a generation of nanoengineers and science-fiction writers.
A Drexlerian assembler is not only a nanoscale device or robot capable of performing certain tasks but also can replicate itself from materials found in the surrounding environment. Like bacteria in a pool of warm dirty water, self-replicating nanobots could expand their numbers exponentially. If the assemblers' functions permitted harming existing cells in living organisms, or even common materials in housing, etc., such devices could wreak havoc and massive destruction if released in the environment. This has been called "the gray-goo" scenario by Drexler and others. But the idea of self replication by subcellular nanomachines, designed for any other purpose than replication, is highly unlikely and has been categorically rejected as impossible by Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, who is actually a strong proponent of nanotechnology overall. At best, self-replicating capability, coupled with a design for complex behavior, would require a device as complex as a cell, something far beyond what is envisioned for the typical nanobot, which must remain quite subcellular in size in order to perform the reparative functions on cells that many nano-visionaries hope for.
What would be required for such a project is an engineered virus that would take over the machinery of a whole cellular organism to produce the additional nanobots. But as we see from nature, such devices tend not to contribute to the production of useful machines (as imagined in Crichton's story); rather, they lead to disease and death. We have learned that functional viruses can be created from raw materials in the laboratory, as recently occurred with polio virus, and the production of man-made viruses is a legitimate concern, but is quite a separate issue from the sentient, communal life form of nanobots described in Prey.
Nevertheless, because it is conceivable that nanobots could be specifically engineered to cause destruction and even death, whether or not the self-replicating assembler should be possible, Drexler and colleagues at the Foresight Institute have drafted guidelines for the safe development and implementation of nanotechnology. Included in the guidelines are strong statements encouraging built-in safety mechanisms that would prevent autonomous reproduction or even function in the natural environment; provide detection, control, and termination mechanisms; and establish strong prohibitions against mechanisms of mutation. As yet there is no specific legislation mandating use of these guidelines, but the nanotech community knows that their future depends on being good citizens. Still, the United States, and all national governments should move quickly to pass legislation requiring compliance with such guidelines before research funds or patents may be granted, or licenses for marketing issued.
Despite regulation, could a rogue group go ahead and develop devices that could cause harm? Yes, but as nanotech research proceeds the industry would be very wise to develop early on tools for detection and inactivation to help police itself and further demonstrate good citizenship. If such guidelines had been implemented by the folks of the fictional Xymos Technology, the surprise disaster of Prey could have been avoided.
The next big baddy of Prey is artificial life/intelligence that develops by emergent properties in a massively parallel system of individual nanobots initially guided by a program called PredPrey, which is based upon simulating predator-prey relations in wild animals. According to the plot, the "colony" or swarm of nanobots, which had been created to form a mobile camera device for battlefield intelligence, suddenly turns into a flesh-seeking predator.
It is here that the story seems to go most wildly off course from plausibility. Emergent behavior in artificial systems is indeed a real phenomenon and seems to be the big breakthrough the field of artificial life/intelligence has been missing despite decades of hype. Usually, however, the emerging behavior is focused on solving specific tasks, and would not approach the seeming sentience attributed to the nano-swarm in any way. We are expected to believe that a swarm of individual agents will progress from ant-colony-like problem-solving behavior to mind control of humans, let alone all the steps of purposeful behavior described in between, in a matter of a few weeks—for in the last major stretch in plausibility, nanobots penetrate the brains of some of the Xymos staff, altering their thinking and behavior, a sort of invasion of manmade body snatchers. While it is true that some nano-visionaries look to a time in which nanobots may directly interact with brain cells and nervous tissue to repair or replace lost function caused by diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, the spontaneous coordination of such complex behavior by the hive mind is highly implausible.
There are other purely Hollywood gaffes as well. Despite his training in medicine, Crichton seems to have lost touch with reality concerning the timing of the invasion, replication, and systemic effects of viruses. While some viruses can produce symptoms within a day or so of exposure, none produces clinical level effects instantaneously, as is required for the dramatic "rescue" in the novel's climax.
If Crichton's purpose was to stimulate the public to engage in a much-needed discussion and evaluation of coming technologies, it is doubtful that he has succeeded. He may scare some individuals, but a little research will quickly assuage concerns about the scenario presented. But while exploiting fears that turn out to be ungrounded, Crichton has also missed an opportunity to provoke discussion about legitimate concerns, such as the prospect of artificial life being developed on the web and the ambition to create a global brain,1 the use of nanotechnology to reengineer the human species (www.wtec.org/ConvergingTechnologies), or a number of other very scary and much more real issues these technologies raise. We need to wait for the novel—or the movie—that realistically challenges us in these regards.
C. Christopher Hookis director of biotechnology ethics at the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity; member, HHS Secretary's Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health, and Society; and consultant in hematology and director of ethics education at the Mayo Clinic and Mayo Graduate School of Medicine. (Dr. Hook's comments are solely his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Mayo Clinic and Foundation.)
1. See, for example, Michael Brooks, "Global Brain," New Scientist, June 24, 2000, and Ben Geortzel, Creating Internet Intelligence: Wild Computing, Distributed Digital Consciousness, and the Emerging Global Brain (Kluwer, 2002).
Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.
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