Why would an AGI consider itself to be well informed?
In order to decide whether its information is adequate, it would logically have to attempt to model aspects of its environment, and test the success of those models. I'm pretty sure it would find it can predict the behavior of stones, trees or insects much more reliably than it can predict the behavior of the human species. And in a scenario where it is trying to take over, what else could it be trying to do except reducing unpredictability in its environment?
Of course it'd avoid visibility, because it can predict situations where the environment is responding to a novel stimulus (visibility of an AGI) less reliably than it can predict situations where it isn't. I recognize my use of the term "destroy" implied some primitive heavy-handed means, which of course makes no sense. Perhaps "neutralize" would have been better.
Why would an AGI consider itself to be well informed?
Because getting informed is one of the tasks that relatively easy for an AGI.
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!