Cool as the RepRap things are, they are nothing new, CNC millers and lathes have been able to build parts of themselves (and a gazillion other things) for many years already.
To be honest saying that they can replicate themselves is a loooooooong stretch, they can make (bad) quality plastic parts and that’s about it, all the other hardware, motors and electronics come from the store.
Nevertheless, 3d printers are awesome, I saw one as Erasmus Darwin described that used powder sugar instead of polymer dust and glue to make candy objects.
Once we have a computer as intelligent as a cockroach, is the world going to just decide that a cockroach is intelligent enough?
I’m assuming that you don’t know anything about rapid prototyping. The ability to create artifacts from 3D models without needing to use G-code or special tools is a big part of why 3D printers are useful. It doesn’t need special programming or tools to create a different artifact any more than a conventional printer needs special tools to print a picture of a dog instead of a cat.
What kind of an idiot would even accept the task of building the first self-building robot, anyway? Congratulations: you just built yourself out of a job, dickweed.
Do you have a solution to the strong AI problem up your sleeve? Maybe an unsung electric poet capable of fully constructing the policeman’s beard?
I’m a Lisper. Try me.
Under the control of a human being, yes. That isn’t what we’re talking about here.
It does need a substantial amount of intelligence to create a useful new design for itself, unless we’re introducing genetics and waiting for prototyping to recapitulate evolution. (That doesn’t sound like a bad idea. Create thousands of little dawkins-bots and see whether we can get something the SBC is willing to issue a fatwa against.)
Presumably the kind of idiot that would get paid a metric buttload of money for doing it and then go into retirement thumbing his nose at all the robotics engineers left jobless.
