If we could we'd probably have gone extinct already.
(I've been trying to avoid the uFAI=extinction thing lately, as there are various reasons that might not be the case. If we build uFAI we'll probably lose in some sense, maybe even to the extent that the common man will be able to notice we lost, but putting emphasis on the extinction scenario might be inaccurate. Killing all the humans doesn't benefit the AI much in most scenarios and can easily incur huge costs, both causally and acausally. Do you disagree that it's worth avoiding conflating losing and extinction?)
Do you disagree that it's worth avoiding conflating losing and extinction?
I agree that it's worth avoiding the conflation. There are losing scenarios that don't involve extinction - most highly concentrated in the realm of not-quite-friendly-AI. (And, naturally, excluding from the class under consideration all "uFAIs" that are insufficiently capable or insufficiently motivated to do anything much at all.)
For the purpose of this utterance it happens that I would make both the claims:
Are there any essays anywhere that go in depth about scenarios where AIs become somewhat recursive/general in that they can write functioning code to solve diverse problems, but the AI reflection problem remains unsolved and thus limits the depth of recursion attainable by the AIs? Let's provisionally call such general but reflection-limited AIs semi-general AIs, or SGAIs. SGAIs might be of roughly smart-animal-level intelligence, e.g. have rudimentary communication/negotiation abilities and some level of ability to formulate narrowish plans of the sort that don't leave them susceptible to Pascalian self-destruction or wireheading or the like.
At first blush, this scenario strikes me as Bad; AIs could take over all computers connected to the internet, totally messing stuff up as their goals/subgoals mutate and adapt to circumvent wireheading selection pressures, without being able to reach general intelligence. AIs might or might not cooperate with humans in such a scenario. I imagine any detailed existing literature on this subject would focus on computer security and intelligent computer "viruses"; does such literature exist, anywhere?
I have various questions about this scenario, including: