I’m not sure what the Dust is, but it is learning. I named it after the scariest thing imaginable. I had in mind something as alien as natural selection, but not actually working that particular way, and with the singleminded focus of a paperclip maximizer.
“Dust” has been used in SF for nanotech before. And especially runaway nanotech, that is trying to disassemble everything, like a doomsday war weapon that got out of control. I recalled the paperclip maximizer too. Oh, and the Polity/Cormac SF books by Neal Asher, with Jain nodes (made by super AIs) that seem to have roughly the same objective.
I’m not sure what the Dust is, but it is learning. I named it after the scariest thing imaginable. I had in mind something as alien as natural selection, but not actually working that particular way, and with the singleminded focus of a paperclip maximizer.
“Dust” has been used in SF for nanotech before. And especially runaway nanotech, that is trying to disassemble everything, like a doomsday war weapon that got out of control. I recalled the paperclip maximizer too. Oh, and the Polity/Cormac SF books by Neal Asher, with Jain nodes (made by super AIs) that seem to have roughly the same objective.