Paperclip maximizer thought experiment makes a lot of people pattern match AI risk to Science Fiction. Do you know any AI risk related thought experiments that avoid that?
If you are just trying to communicate risk, analogy to a virus might be helpful in this respect. A natural virus can be thought of as code that has goals. If it harms humankind, it doesn't 'intend' to, it is just a side effect of achieving its goals. We might create an artificial virus with a goal that everyone recognizes as beneficial (e.g., end malaria), but that does harm due to unexpected consequences or because the artificial virus evolves, self-modifying its original goal. Note that once a virus is released into the environment, it is nontrivial to 'delete' or 'turn off'. AI will operate in an environment that is many times more complex: "mindspace".
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