
Scientists build army of a million microrobots that fit inside hypodermic needle - apsec112
https://www.cnet.com/news/scientists-build-army-of-1-million-microrobots-that-can-fit-inside-a-hypodermic-needle/
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shadowprofile77
Many here have commented on the lamentable weaknesses of this development in
terms of size constraints and so forth, and on possible medical applications,
which could indeed be fascinating and useful for saving lives, but what about
the much darker potential of technology like this developing heavily:

Basically, if we're worried about modern mass surveillance, try to imagine a
situation in which nano-scale surveillance is possible of large numbers of
people, with devices that attach to nearly anything, are virtually invisible
and could potentially even have the capacity to record location, audio and
video of anything they're applied to, including both targeted civilians and
large areas in which you could never be sure whether or not some
government/police controlled army of microscopic bots is watching, tracking
and listening. Don't tell me that exactly that wouldn't occur to both
corporations and governments as this develops further.

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j9461701
I'm reminded of the novel The Golden Globe, by john varley. In that novel very
powerful AI handle most day to day operations of society, and it is mentioned
by one of them that - technologically speaking - they could create the single
most despotic and privacy-eliminating regime in human history. A place where
even an individual's thoughts and emotions are no longer secret, let alone
snooping on every word they ever speak. The AI then says it could do this, but
it will not, and has intentionally blinded itself to all such data streams.
The central intelligence refuses to examine the incoming data as it believes
doing so would violate its subjects human rights. In-novel this is why the AI
doesn't just tell our protagonist where the big bad is, but I've found it an
interesting possible trajectory for the future. Where every word we say is
monitored, but it is strictly illegal to view said monitoring.

I wonder if that is the most realistic version of a future were we still have
private lives.

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bjo590
> I wonder if that is the most realistic version of a future were we still
> have private lives.

I think it's almost impossible for someone to build these data streams and not
look at them. Look at the mass amount of surveillance every major country is
participating in. Government officials in open and democratic countries have
lied about the amount of surveillance they are doing, get caught, and keep the
surveillance going. I think the more probabilistic future where we have
private lives comes from futures where that technology is never built. This is
to say, privacy is almost certainly dying.

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shadowprofile77
Unless a still unknown counter-technology comes along to make privacy and
individual empowerment much more concrete. Or, more conservatively, existing
or near-extrapolation derivative technologies democratize enough to make
surveillance far too costly for state actors without blowback.

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andrewl
Is there anything besides ( _massive_ ) engineering challenges standing
between more advanced devices like this physically eating away at cancerous
tumors in the same way physicians use special maggots for wound debridement?

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gnramires
Calling those robots is a bit misleading, because they lack self-control.
Control logic we know is large for very small robots. If you want a micron-
scale robot you only get about 100 transistors for its "intelligence"[1].
There are certainly things it could do, but probably not autonomously
navigate, map and recognize tumors.

We just don't have the expertise for those kinds of thing, at least not yet. A
plethora of sensors (that can detect cancerous cells) and this sort of
technology would be needed. We'd essentially be trying to create artificial
cells, a monumental task nature took billions of years in refinement (even if
we can find shortcuts sometimes) -- too many very complex systems (energy,
better sensors, better movement inside the body, "cognition", etc.).

Maybe in 50 years of continued research? 100 years? I don't know.

[1] The state of the art is about 100 transistors per square micron. This
assumes you could drive and interface with them adequately. Cells accomplish
all they do without any transistors at all, it's all protein-based sensors and
DNA-encoded behavior, I believe.

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andrewl
Maybe the route toward what I'm envisioning (and hoping for) is genetically
engineered or enhanced cells. Modify and existing system that already does a
lot instead of trying to recreate a cell from the ground up.

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jcims
This isn't far from what immunotherapy is doing. Cancer can only thrive when
it avoids an immune response, either by looking sufficiently like a healthy
cell to remain below the radar or actively suppressing actions of the immune
system.

Immunotherapy looks for ways to counteract this 'feature' and allow the immune
system to do its job and murder the bastards.

We're still effectively in the early days of this approach to treating cancer
and results are mixed, but it shows incredible promise and I feel that it
ultimately will be the way we beat most if not all cancers.

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systematical
This is awesome, but I think these will need an EOL/self-destruct mechanism.
What happens if these things just linger in the body after performing a
function like destroying cancer cells?

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WrtCdEvrydy
I wonder if kidneys could filter them out and just urinate them out?

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appler
Michael Crichton - Prey
[https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0061703087/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_UHC...](https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0061703087/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_UHCsFb1DTZ93R)

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Cyphase
Crufty links make my eyes twitch. :) Here's a cleaned up version:
[https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0061703087](https://www.amazon.ca/dp/0061703087)

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carabiner
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...

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dvh
Eevblog had video on using $0.01 programmable chip.

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sxv
Not the headline we need to quell the vaccine conspiracy theories..

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jb775
By _vaccine conspiracy theories_ , I'm assuming you mean the aspect about
microchips secretly being added to vaccines. But doesn't it actually add
validity to the technological aspects of these concerns when a newly published
paper details successfully adding 1 million microchips capable of injection
into the human body? How wouldn't it?

Obviously this doesn't touch on the nefarious underpinnings of the vaccine
debate, but in what other scenario would presentation of new research
validating the technological capabilities of something be a reason to scoff
at? Sounds like a classic case of cognitive dissonance where you've been
presented with fresh evidence that adds support to something contrary to your
beliefs but are disregarding what's actually been presented and instead are
digging your heels in.

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Dylan16807
You seem to misunderstand.

Yes, it does add a tiny bit of validity to the technical aspect. Which is a
_bad_ thing, because it encourages those people. Even worse, the headline
_sounds_ like it adds much more validity than it actually does, so the bad
encouragement is magnified based on their lack of understanding.

There is no cognitive dissonance in saying "ugh, those morons are going to act
like this proves their entire claim right, when it actually takes the claim
from being incorrect in 44 different ways to being incorrect in 'only' 43 and
a half different ways". Nobody is disregarding the evidence here.

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29athrowaway
Then problem is when people take headlines like these and use it as an
argument against vaccination.

