Just to make sure I understand you: if A is a program that has full access to its source code and the specifications of the hardware it's running on, and A designs a new machine infrastructure and applies pressure to the world (e.g., through money or blackmail or whatever works) to induce humans to build an instance of that machine, B, such that B allows software-mediated hardware modification (for example, by having an automated chip-manufacturing plant attached to it), you would say that B is an "incorrectly-designed" CPU that might allow for a positive feedback loop.
Is that right?
Put a different way: this argument assumes that the existence of intelligent software doesn't alter our predictions that CPUs will all be "correctly designed." That might be true, or might not be.
No, this is not a case of an incorrectly designed CPU. This is a case where there's a human in the loop and where the process of evolution will therefore be slow. It's not a FOOM if it takes years between improvements, during which time the rest of the world is also improving.
We are very far from having a wholly-automated CPU-builder-plus-machine-assembly-and-install system. This is not a process that I expect a mildly-superhuman intelligence to be able to short-circuit.
I am emailing experts in order to raise and estimate the academic awareness and perception of risks from AI. Below are some questions I am going to ask. Please help to refine the questions or suggest new and better questions.
(Thanks goes to paulfchristiano, Steve Rayhawk and Mafred.)
Q1: Assuming beneficially political and economic development and that no global catastrophe halts progress, by what year would you assign a 10%/50%/90% chance of the development of artificial intelligence that is roughly as good as humans at science, mathematics, engineering and programming?
Q2: Once we build AI that is roughly as good as humans at science, mathematics, engineering and programming, how much more difficult will it be for humans and/or AIs to build an AI which is substantially better at those activities than humans?
Q3: Do you ever expect artificial intelligence to overwhelmingly outperform humans at typical academic research, in the way that they may soon overwhelmingly outperform humans at trivia contests, or do you expect that humans will always play an important role in scientific progress?
Q4: What probability do you assign to the possibility of an AI with initially (professional) human-level competence at general reasoning (including science, mathematics, engineering and programming) to self-modify its way up to vastly superhuman capabilities within a matter of hours/days/< 5 years?
Q5: How important is it to figure out how to make superhuman AI provably friendly to us and our values (non-dangerous), before attempting to build AI that is good enough at general reasoning (including science, mathematics, engineering and programming) to undergo radical self-modification?
Q6: What probability do you assign to the possibility of human extinction as a result of AI capable of self-modification (that is not provably non-dangerous, if that is even possible)?