We can generate similar conclusions in lots of other ways. Intel's annual revenue is larger than Google's. The semiconductor industry is an order of magnitude larger than Google. If Google spent literally every dollar they owned on chips, never mind powering them, writing code for them, or even putting them in data centers, then Google might be able to buy 15% of the world's computer chips. That still wouldn't be equivalent to "Google now controls a very large proportion of the world's computing resources."
And compute power isn't fungible. GPUs are worthless for a lot of applications. You can't run a calculation on a million servers spread out across the globe unless you're doing something very easy like SETI@home. Most algorithms aren't trivial to split into a million pieces that don't need to talk to each other.
Intel's annual revenue is larger than Google's
From Wikipedia, 2013 revenues:
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!