Don't say "it's not too hard" before you can actually specify how to do it.
Simply model how the world would progress if the computer had no power but the ball was red.
The ball wasn't red. What does it even mean that a "ball" is "red" or "not red"? How sure can the AI be that it got the intended meaning correctly, and that the ball is actually as red as possible? Should it convert the mass of the galaxy to a device that ensures optimal redness of the ball?
The difference between non-autonomous tools and AGIs is that AGIs don't fail to make an arbitrarily large effect on the world. And so if they have a tiny insignificant inclination to sort the rocks on a planet in a distant galaxy in prime heaps, they will turn the universe upside down to make that happen.
Red = "reflect electromagnetic radiation with a spectrum like X".
If you do not like the Red ball thing, feel free to invent another test, such as flipping a few bits on another computer.
Should it convert the mass of the galaxy to a device that ensures optimal redness of the ball?
No as that would lead to an decrease in mutual information between the two models. It doesn't care about the ball any more than it does the rest of the universe. This may lead to it doing nothing and not changing the ball colour at all.
...The difference between non-
One of the things I've been thinking about is how to safely explore the nature of intelligence. I'm unconvinced of FOOMing and would rather we didn't avoid AI entirely if we can't solve Yudkowsky style Friendliness. So some method of experimentation is needed to determine how powerful intelligence actually is.
So can we create an AI that has very limited scope? That is try and avoid the drives by setting goals such as avoiding changing the world and turning itself off after having achieved a small goal?
Let us say the goal is to change the colour of a ball from green to red. You can leave paint and paint brushes and a robot around to make it easy, but it might determine the best way (least world-changing) is to create a dye manufacturing bacteria instead. How well it did on the test would also allow you to gauge the optimising power of the system to know whether we need "first mover/winner take all" style friendliness or societal friendliness for many AI .
Creating AIs without drives seems easier than creating ones that do have goals to shape the rest of human history. What do other people think