I read Prey as a teenager. Now I flinch every time I hear “nanotech.”
A late-night read turned lingering tech paranoia about where AI and nanotech might really take us.
I was just trying to kill time when I picked up that book. Instead, it rewired my brain.
Michael Crichton’s Prey was the first time I’d ever heard the word “nanotechnology”. I didn’t fully get it then — tiny robots? Clouds of AI particles? It sounded like science fiction’s weirder cousin, but it left a knot in my throat I’ve never fully untied.
I was maybe 15. I didn’t even have a proper computer yet, just a second-hand phone and a vague curiosity about how tech worked. But Crichton didn’t explain nanotech like a hopeful TED Talk.
He described it like a thing that could escape your lab, learn from you, outsmart you, and then replicate itself until it didn’t need you anymore. It wasn’t the science that stuck with me; it was the tone. This quiet, clinical sense of we built something clever... and now we can’t stop it.
Fast-forward to 2025. I’m older, allegedly wiser, and drowning in AI tools, machine learning demos, GPTs, self-coding bots, and yes, the occasional real-life headline about “Autonomous nanobots for medical use”.
Here’s where my inner teen flinches, because Prey doesn’t feel like fiction anymore. Instead, it feels like a warning we politely ignore.
So, what happens when we make something that can think at a microscopic level?
A robot you can unplug is one thing. A swarm of invisible, self-teaching machines that can learn, adapt, replicate? That’s a different beast entirely, especially if they’re designed to repair tissue, navigate bloodstreams, or perform surgery without a scalpel. We’re not talking about a Terminator. We’re talking about something far harder to see, and maybe harder to stop.
It’s not the size of the robot that scares me. It’s the fact that one line of code could turn a cure into a contagion.
Of course, the real experts will say it’s all tightly controlled, medically tested, regulated, and safe. Sure, until one line of code slips. AI is still a baby, but babies grow fast.
We’ve given algorithms the ability to write, draw, code, speak, and persuade. What happens when we pair that learning engine with a nanobot that can move, build, and multiply?
I don’t know. I’m not a scientist. I’m just a millennial with a stubborn memory, a slightly overactive imagination, and a tendency to overthink things at 1:27 am.
Prey still sits on my shelf, and every time I hear the words “programmable matter” in a press release, something in me winces.
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