Assume it is provided with suitable raw input materials. It can't receive any outside assistance apart from being provided the input materials in a way that doesn't take over parts of the production process. No fabricating individual components that are to be assembled by a different system, it must fully reproduce itself in a way that looks like converting raw input materials into copies of itself fairly automatically, such that those copies could go on to produce a further copy if provided inputs in the same fashion.
If it's a two stage process, where a system produces something else that can then produce it, and then that thing fabricates a copy of it only provided input materials, that counts.
An Earth-originating AI that technically has such a 3D printer, even if humanity can't access it, counts.
An article I only skimmed argues that we have almost all the necessary tech today. The last line is: "I'm sure it will be fine. Nothing can possibly go wrong."
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/rQxrSRPJGmksGjK8z/it-s-time-for-a-self-reproducing-machine?utm_campaign=post_share&utm_source=link
What is a raw material? e.g. where along the continuum from iron ore -> pig iron -> ... -> sheet metal -> cut-out parts does the material cease to be raw enough?
This should be taken to mean anything that Earth already has produced and on-hand to be used for building things besides the device. I'm excluding anything where the definition of raw materials could be getting twisted to allow things too near a completed copy of the thing already.
The 3D printer should be able to create other things as well, the self-reproduction condition is to select a quality-of-production boundary being passed for something which can fabricate more generally.
I'm still not clear what you mean, does Earth include humans (even a standard M10 screw is fine), or do you mean only naturally occurring material (hematite is fine but pig iron is not)?
Earth includes humans here, so screws are fine, along with anything else sufficiently general purpose that it goes into manufacturing things besides the device. Cut out parts seem unlikely to typically qualify for that reason; if that particular cut isn't being done by the self-fabricator and a part cut that way only gets used for the self-fabricator, it doesn't count. General-purpose electronics count.
It may be best to treat it as "Earth's economy has the right economic outputs to produce the thing before anybody produces economic outputs specifically for the self-fabricating device."
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What is this?
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