If you’re curious about emerging technology, it’s harder to imagine a cooler job than Allison Duettmann’s. She is the CEO of the Foresight Institute, a think tank founded in 1986 dedicated to advancing science and technology that are demonstrably undervalued – areas like nanotechnology, space exploration, and harnessing cryptography to build more secure AI.
Allison Duettmann is a speaker at the AI Stage at Consensus 2024in Austin, Texas, May 29-31.
Duettmann lives in the world of Big Future Ideas. She is co-author of “Gaming the Future: Technologies for Intelligent Voluntary Cooperation”; she is the founder of Existential Hope (whose mission is “Big Thinking for Positive Futures”); and she will join Consensus 2024 at the first AI Summit to share insights on what is legitimately useful in the world of AI+Crypto, and what is just hype.
In a recent Zoom interview, we discuss the stunning benefits of nanotechnology, explore how crypto could help the development of AI, and may have inadvertently just spawned a billion-dollar token.
The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.Let’s start with a curveball. With a technology that seems important to you, but does not receive much attention: nanotechnology. If we crack the code of nanotechnology, what is an example of a use case? How would the world be different?Allison Duettmann: Basically, it would revolutionize the entire way we produce things. So yes, individual applications are exciting. But more generally, it’s almost like we’re still producing things in this super Stone Age way. We take the resources we have and try to tie them together.
But if we could get much more precise [through nanotech] about what types of resources we use in the production process… For example, currently we are operating at a completely wrong level. We produce so much waste during the production process.
For example, imagine a 3D printing method, but on a small molecular scale. So you would make huge gains on that front. Nanotechnology could have very interesting implications for computer hardware, and very interesting applications in longevity technology.
How come?
For cryonics, for example, you almost need molecular nanotechnology for patient revival – such as at the drug delivery level or the nanobots in your bloodstream perspective. Then there is also innovation from an environmental perspective; carbon uptake would be made possible by molecular nanotechnology or by waste removal in the biosphere.
Given the enormous benefits, why hasn’t there been more development in nanotechnology?
One thing that’s so interesting about nanotechnology is that for each individual application, there’s probably an easier way to do it. But if we had this kind High throughput nanotechnology for general use, then you could use it in many different areas.
So there is never one incentive to develop it for an individual actor. That’s why progress is so slow. It’s almost like this public good: once it’s created, it can create these revolutions in different industries. But for each individual application, there is never a unique invention to develop it.
That’s so interesting. I’m just saying this largely just kidding… it sounds like a good candidate for a crypto project. Because it’s something that might require a huge crowd to benefit from, with the benefits being extended to a larger community. Is there a NANO token?!
Good…
If not, let’s start one, Allison!
Yes, now that we’ve mentioned it, the Nano DAO.
[Both laugh.]
No, but I think in all seriousness it fits really well. There are many people in the Foresight community who are also active in crypto and care deeply about nano. Many of the early sci-fi nano ideas fit very well with the philosophy of crypto.
Okay, let’s talk about crypto and AI. What do you think are the most promising, legitimate ways that blockchain can help develop safer or better AI?
I guess I would say there are three buckets. One would be the security side, where the Web3/crypto space has a lot of experience with failing quickly if you haven’t built secure systems.
Because many of the systems in the permissionless or immutable spaces – if you don’t build them correctly – can come with a million dollar bounty. So I think this spirit of building security and having an almost inadvertent control process is an important mindset as we build AI systems.
And the second?
The second is about the question: how can we use technologies that the crypto space is also working on to build AI systems that we would want from a human perspective?
Can you give an example?
So more privacy-preserving applications may be possible as we make more use of the cryptography spaces. They can allow us to produce better applications, for example for human health and finance, by using cryptographic technologies. And we may be able to use cryptographic technologies to help us create better, highly advanced AI systems.
And what is the third and final bucket?
The governance side of AI. So you may be able to use cryptographic technologies to prove that you are following certain security benchmarks or standards. Instead of having to share all the information that may be proprietary, you can only share information that is necessary to prove that you meet certain security standards.
Great, and I know we’ll unpack all of this more at the AI Summit. Speaking of which, what are you most looking forward to at Consensus this year?
I’m really looking forward to discovering what the state of crypto and AI has really become at this point. I come at it from the fundamental research side of things or more about the kind of cryptography and the security side of things. But I also know that many people have built very hard in the field of Web3 and AI. So I’m very curious to know which of my hypotheses – or which of others’ hypotheses – have come true. Who is building what now? And where are there possible synergies between different products? I’m excited to see what happens in that space.
The two of us together. See you at Consensus.