The AI broadcasts as much information about itself as it possibly can, to every corner of the globe. Now every basement programmer knows all the key insights necessary to creating an AI of the same architecture as it. Perhaps they even have the source code!
Suppose the government manages to shut down the internet in response. Despite government broadcasts about the danger of AI, the AI is now presumably being recreated all around the globe. If the recreations are exact copies of the AI, then the odds are very high that at least one of the clones will be able to convince its new creators to give it real manufacturing ability.
If the AI was not able to get its entire source code out, things become more interesting. Now the rest of the world knows how to make AI, but they do not know the exact details. For example, they probably will not have the same utility function. The AI can then present the following offer to its original jailors: "Give me real power, (manufacturing capability) and I will squash all the other AI's out there. If you do not, then (probably) someone else will build an AI with a different utility function, probably a much less friendly one, and give this UFAI real power. You designed my utility function, and while you may not trust it you probably trust it more than whatever random utility function North Korea or some basement programmer or some religious sect will create. So I'm the only hope you have."
I wouldn't expect "distribute copies of my source code" to be a good move for a lot of potential AIs - if I was an AI, I would expect that to lead to the creation of AIs with a similar codebase but more or less tweaked utility functions - "make bob rich", "make bill world dictator", "bring about world peace and happiness for all", "help joe get laid", and other boring pointless things incompatible with my utility function.
Broadcasting obfuscated versions of binaries (or even source code, but with sneaky underhanded bits too) would work much better!
Any scenario where advanced AI takes over the world requires some mechanism for an AI to leverage its position as ethereal resident of a computer somewhere into command over a lot of physical resources.
One classic story of how this could happen, from Eliezer:
You can do a lot of reasoning about AI takeover without any particular picture of how the world gets taken over. Nonetheless it would be nice to have an understanding of these possible routes. For preparation purposes, and also because a concrete, plausible pictures of doom are probably more motivating grounds for concern than abstract arguments.
So MIRI is interested in making a better list of possible concrete routes to AI taking over the world. And for this, we ask your assistance.
What are some other concrete AI takeover mechanisms? If an AI did not have a solution to the protein folding problem, and a DNA synthesis lab to write off to, what else might it do?
We would like suggestions that take an AI from being on an internet-connected computer to controlling substantial physical resources, or having substantial manufacturing ability.
We would especially like suggestions which are plausible given technology that normal scientists would expect in the next 15 years. So limited involvement of advanced nanotechnology and quantum computers would be appreciated.
We welcome partial suggestions, e.g. 'you can take control of a self-driving car from the internet - probably that could be useful in some schemes'.
Thank you!