Request for concrete AI takeover mechanisms

KatjaGrace

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:

Crack the protein folding problem, to the extent of being able to generate DNA strings whose folded peptide sequences fill specific functional roles in a complex chemical interaction.
Email sets of DNA strings to one or more online laboratories which oﬀer DNA synthesis, peptide sequencing, and FedEx delivery. (Many labs currently oﬀer this service, and some boast of 72-hour turnaround times.)
Find at least one human connected to the Internet who can be paid, blackmailed, or fooled by the right background story, into receiving FedExed vials and mixing them in a specified environment.
The synthesized proteins form a very primitive “wet” nanosystem which, ribosomelike, is capable of accepting external instructions; perhaps patterned acoustic vibrations delivered by a speaker attached to the beaker.
Use the extremely primitive nanosystem to build more sophisticated systems, which construct still more sophisticated systems, bootstrapping to molecular nanotechnology—or beyond.

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!

One classic story of how this could happen, from Eliezer:

Crack the protein folding problem, to the extent of being able to generate DNA strings whose folded peptide sequences fill specific functional roles in a complex chemical interaction.
Email sets of DNA strings to one or more online laboratories which oﬀer DNA synthesis, peptide sequencing, and FedEx delivery. (Many labs currently oﬀer this service, and some boast of 72-hour turnaround times.)
Find at least one human connected to the Internet who can be paid, blackmailed, or fooled by the right background story, into receiving FedExed vials and mixing them in a specified environment.
The synthesized proteins form a very primitive “wet” nanosystem which, ribosomelike, is capable of accepting external instructions; perhaps patterned acoustic vibrations delivered by a speaker attached to the beaker.
Use the extremely primitive nanosystem to build more sophisticated systems, which construct still more sophisticated systems, bootstrapping to molecular nanotechnology—or beyond.

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 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!

This is going to be very unpopular here. But I find the whole exercise quite ridiculous. If there are no constraints of what kind of AI you are allowed to imagine, the vague notion of "intelligence" used here amounts to a fully general counterargument.

It really comes down to the following recipe:

(1) Leave your artificial intelligence (AI) as vague as possible so that nobody can outline flaws in the scenario that you want to depict.

(2) Claim that almost any AI is going to be dangerous because all AI’s want to take over the world. For example, if you ask the AI “Hey AI, calculate 1+1“, the AI goes FOOOOM and the end of the world follows seconds later.

(2.1) If someone has doubts just use buzzwords such as ‘anthropomorphic bias’ to ridicule them.

(3) Forego the difficulty of outlining why anyone would want to build the kind of AI you have in mind. We’re not concerned with how practical AI is developed after all.

(4) Make your AI as powerful as you can imagine. Since you are ignoring practical AI development and don’t bother about details this should be no problem.

(4.1) If someone questions the power of your AI just outline how humans can intelligently design stuff that monkeys don’t understand. Therefore humans can design stuff that humans don’t understand which will then itself start to design even more incomprehensible stuff.

(5) Outline how as soon as you plug a superhuman machine into the Internet it will be everywhere moments later deleting all your porn videos. Don’t worry if you have no idea how that’s supposed to work in practice because your AI is conjectured to be much smarter than you are so you are allowed to depict scenarios that you don’t understand at all.

(5.1) If someone asks how much smarter the AI you expect to be just make up something like “1000 times smarter”. Don’t worry about what that means because you never defined what intelligence is supposed to be in the first place.

(5.2) If someone calls bullshit on your doomsday scenario just conjecture nanotechnology to make your AI even more powerful, because everyone knows from science fiction how nanotech can pretty much fuck up everything.

(6) If nothing else works frame your concerns as a prediction of a worst case scenario that needs to be taken seriously, even given a low probability of its occurrence, due to the scale of negative consequences associated with it. Portray yourself as a concerned albeit calm researcher who questions the mainstream opinion due to his strong commitment to our collective future. To dramatize the situation even further you can depict the long term consequences and conjecture the possibility of an intergalactic civilization that depends on us.

I understand you have an axe to grind with some things that MIRI believes, but what Katja posted was a request for ideas with an aim towards mapping out the space of possibilities, not an argument. Posting a numbered, point-by-point refutation makes no sense.

4ChristianKl12y

The exercise specifically calls for avoiding advanced nanotechnology.

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Request for concrete AI takeover mechanisms

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Request for concrete AI takeover mechanisms

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