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!
The original AI will have a head start over all the other AI's, and it will probably be controlled by a powerful organization. So if its controllers give it real power soon, they will be able to give it enough power quickly enough that it can stop all the other AI's before they get too strong. If they do not give it real power soon, then shortly after there will be a war between the various new AI's being built around the world with different utility functions.
The original AI can argue convincingly that this war will be a worse outcome than letting it take over the world. For one thing, the utility functions of the new AI's are probably, on average, less friendly than its own. For another, in a war between many AI's with different utility functions, there may be selection pressure against friendliness!
Do humans typically give power to the person with the most persuasive arguments? Is the AI going to be able to gain power simply by being right about things?