The AI could gain control by demonstrating it had hidden pathogens that if released would kill almost everyone. As Paul Atreides said "He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." As the technology to make such pathogens probably already exists the AI could hack into various labs and give instructions to people or machines to make the pathogens, then send orders for the pathogens to be delivered to various places, and then erase records of where most of the pathogens were. The AI then blackmails mankind into subservience. Alternatively, the AI could first develop a treatment for the pathogens, then release the pathogens, and then give the treatment only to people who submit to the AI. The treatment would have to be regularly taken and difficult to copy.
More benevolently, the AI makes a huge amount of money off of financial markets, uses the resources to start its own country, runs the country really, really well and expands citizenship to anyone who joins. Eventually, when the country is strong enough, the AI (with the genuine support of most people) uses military force to take over the world, giving us an AI monarchy.
Or, the AI freely gives advice to anyone who asks. The advice is so good that most people follow it. Organizations and people that follow the advice do much better (and get far more power) than those that don't. The AI effectively gains control of the world. If the AI wants to speed up the process, it only gives advice to people who refuse to interact with organizations that don't listen to the AI.
The AI identifies a group of extremely smart people and tricks them into answering the "hypothetical" question "how could an AI take over the world?"
More benevolently, the AI makes a huge amount of money off of financial markets, uses the resources to start its own country, runs the country really, really well and expands citizenship to anyone who joins. Eventually, when the country is strong enough, the AI (with the genuine support of most people) uses military force to take over the world, giving us an AI monarchy.
Seems unlikely. Sure, it could be done, but it would waste a lot of time. I doubt a typical superintelligent agent would do that.
...The AI identifies a group of extremely smart people and
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!