I used the idea of self-replicating nanobots in my novel “The Code. If you AI loses its mind can it take meds?” They were the arms and legs of Gene – the AI at the centre of the book, and they were the way his computational outputs were put into action.
When I wrote that I didn’t know of the 2017 article in Huffpost talking about the second technological singularity – self replicating nanobots, where the author put the date as in the 2050’s.
The first singularity is when there is a machine that is smarter than all humanity (2040's).
So another sci-fi concept has come true. There is a report of an AI (thanks team - whose side are you on anyway) has helped to design a cell sized robot that does just that – creating multi-generational lines of robots that make more robots.
In my novel they were called builder bots (ok – not very imaginative, but you got the idea), the impact was the same – to produce more robots for specific activities.
So is it still 2050’s for the nano version?