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With appropriate organization and accounting, there's no reason malfunctioning units couldn't be repaired or reprocessed. It seems like that would be a sensible regulation for companies building self replicating machines.


> there's no reason malfunctioning units couldn't be repaired or reprocessed

If you have enough of them, and a long enough time scale, they might mutate in such a way to avoid being detected.


It's an important concern, but I think mitigatable - especially since we're not neccessarily talking about actual self contained replicating machines, and instead more likely automated factories producing drones - a multi step process where everything has to go right for replication, and into which safeguards can be engineered/studied. Basically, the process needs to be designed to fail due to entropy without external intervention/maintenance.

If we become advanced enough to consider building such things, we can engage in a serious investigation of the risks - for now it's just speculation.


Ah, but if they’re in space who’s doing the regulation?




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