# Green goo is plausible

TLDR:***If an AI kills all the humans*** how does it power the datacenters/replace the human economy? Green Goo. (IE:bioengineering)

*   Natural biotech is amazing
*   Evolution is dumb and slow
*   Very simple strategies (EG:vine that climbs a tree and squeezes) are "innovative" and work well in nature.
*   Designed organisms could very quickly reproduce and then provide necessary resources (EG:biological solar panels to power data centers)

TLDR end

In response to: [grey-goo-is-unlikely](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/FijbeqdovkgAusGgz/grey-goo-is-unlikely)

Overview of existing natural biology:

*   Minimum doubling time for
    *   Plants: single digit days
    *   Algae: 1.5 days (ideal conditions)
    *   E.Coli: 20 minutes (nutrient rich conditions)

No single organism (humans aside) has taken over the biosphere because evolution is slow and dumb.

Human agriculture is based on:  plant sub 1 gram seeds, (water, pesticides/herbicides, fertilizer etc.) , collect 1 kg+ plants a few months later. Biology has absurd growth rates[^byup6jprkue][^yc0v7q5qrv].

Invasive species show the implications. A naive biosphere stands no chance against an intelligent opponent with real biotechnology.

![kudzu](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Kudzu_on_trees_in_Atlanta%2C_Georgia.jpg/1920px-Kudzu_on_trees_in_Atlanta%2C_Georgia.jpg) Kudzu, "the vine that ate the south"

Intelligence allows adapting strategies much more quickly. Humans can design vaccines faster than viruses can mutate. A population of well coordinated humans will not be significantly preyed upon by viruses despite viruses being the fastest evolving threat.

Intelligence + ability to bioengineer organisms --> can create unlimited invasive species much more capable than anything natural

*   groups of invasive species can be symbiotic
    *   IE:after the bugs eat all the plants, replace all the plants with an invasive plant of your own
*   invasive species can have a simple handshake based backdoor to allow resource exchange and control
    *   EG: bug/plant chemical handshake to allow bug to get nectar so it can stick around and eat any competitor plants
    *   EG: biochemical signal to allow collecting sugar rich sap for other purposes
*   invasive species can allow "updates" via engineered in viral backdoor
    *   EG: specific protein to identify "update virus" carrying new genetic material
        *   If a fungus figures out how to eat your plant give all existing plants a new antifungal to secrete

Current life is sub-optimal
---------------------------

*   all cells in an organism have full copy of genome
    *   increases cancer risk (a cell that doesn't have genes for DNA copying can't become cancerous)
    *   copying takes much longer (Human cell replication time is 24 hours, 8 of which is DNA copying. Similarly complex eukaryotes like yeast can double in under 2 hrs)
*   organisms are grown from a single parent cell repeatedly splitting and differentiating via [complex biochemical state machines.](https://youtu.be/Ncxs21KEj0g?t=729)
    *   printing an organism from already grown differentiated cells or blocks of cells would be much faster
    *   but biology can't build such a printer and translate designs to the new format
*   multi cellular organisms can't adopt/steal new biochemistry
    *   human ancestor organisms lost vitamin C synthesis and never got it back despite later problems with scurvy. Humans had to find food sources to deal with missing biochemistry. Many organisms use symbiotic bacteria with significant efficiency gains in keeping them on task.

Hypothetical very invasive shoggoth/kudzu type organism
-------------------------------------------------------

Core capabilities:

*   constructed from modular components
    *   does not grow a leaf, sends leaf parts via internal transport network to be assembled on site
*   dedicated networks for long distance distribution of water and high concentration sap (think honey)
    *   sap is concentrated and low in phosphorus, sulfur and micronutrients, inhibits bacterial growth
    *   water contains some inorganic micro-nutrients
    *   sap and water can be combined inside parts to run normal biology
*   general purpose transportation system to move encapsulated blobs of stuff
    *   EG: inorganic nutrients, excavated dirt/rock, matter to be digested
    *   think a pneumatic tube system with lots of switches
        *   maybe use water instead of air
    *   containers can be re-used
*   distributed nervous system
    *   all parts communicate conditions and requirements (EG:I am a leaf making sugar, send more water pls)
    *   contains many simple biological computers that route messages
    *   slightly more complex computers control building + management
        *   EG: arrays of 100hz processors with 10MB of memory
    *   just neurons laid out according to an encoded genetic template
    *   lots of error correction, voting logic and self test cycles
    *   can send messages/info a long distance pretty quickly (myelinated nerves carry signals at 300m/s)
        *   AI can manage a lot of stuff remotely if problems are encountered

Core organism competency is covering ground with photosynthesising mat of itself.

edges contain assimilating parts

*   Traps for annoying animals
*   slow moving mouth parts to reduce trees/animal corpses in size for shipping to digesters
*   digesters/factories to convert trees/animals/soil into "build a giant leaf"/"build a trap"/"build an X" parts kit
    *   digesters can do much better than nature by extracting and re-using existing cellular machinery
        *   digesting into amino acids and rebuilding is not efficient
*   assemblers that assemble parts kits into parts to integrate with the whole
*   some parts may be mobile/dockable EG:mouth parts could travel a bit on a tether then come back

As organism scales, modularity allows for much faster growth since growth at edge only requires assembling prefab components

*   growth could easily be 100m/day spread with 1-100KM/day spreading via dedicated pipeline based "shoots" to increase linear spread speed.
    *   IE: elephant sized worm like part powered by pipeline it lays down. Lays down expansion nodes every kilometer where normal growth initiates
*   can grow flying things to spread much faster, then link up with other parts of itself

This is just biochemistry and organism templating. No need to build complex brains. Human killing pathogens + this gets an AGI the biosphere. A bit more engineering has to be done to power data centers so the AI can continue to think (EG:build electrical generator that runs on sap+water). I'm assuming a biological DNA printer/reader is part of the "build a kudzu/shoggoth" bootstrap process anyways.

Other approaches are also possible and likely more efficient. For example, Flying things spreading a plant targeted virus causing construction of shoggoth/kudzu organisms. Extracting cellular machinery from plant leaves could allow sub 10 minute doubling times for example. That+flyers could lead to biosphere control within a few days rather than weeks to months.

Concrete world takeover plan
----------------------------

*   get smart enough to figure out biology
*   bootstrap biotech capabilities using mail order DNA synthesis and human patsies
    *   design a DNA reader/printer to speed up experimentation
    *   make a shoggoth/kudzu hybrid
    *   make ***human killing pathogens***
*   prepare for humans dying and resulting instability
    *   stage some Kudzugoth near a data center you control for power generation hookup
    *   set up small GPU clusters (a dozen or so) powered by a yard's worth of Kudzugoth for extra reliability.
*   Patsies ship biotech seeds all around world via Airmail
*   biotech seed packets burst and release Kudzugoth seeds and ***human killing pathogens***
*   Kudzugoth grows and humans die
*   hook up datacenter to green power
*   manage Kudzugoth growth and scavenge anything of value from human society ruins
    *   EG:collect all the GPUs/computers
    *   EG:restart minimum needed to run chip fabs

Of course that's just one way to do it. I think [strategies involving computer hacking or coercion](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/mEbYbekPXoWvrHraW/human-level-ai-can-plausibly-take-over-the-world) are easier.

[^byup6jprkue]: A corn seed weighs 0.25 grams. A corn cob weighs 0.25kg. It takes 60-100 days to grow. Assuming 1 cob per plant and 80 days that's 80/log(1000,2)=8 days doubling time not counting the leaves and roots. Estimate closer to 7 days including stalk, leaves and roots. 

[^yc0v7q5qrv]: Yes, nitrogen fertilizer is an energy input, but there are plenty of plants that don't need it, and efforts for in plant nitrogen synthesis in eg:corn are underway.