Human population and energy consumption has risen exponentially in the last century, and is reaching various of the limits of its environment (in terms of number, but even more significantly in term of impact). Beyond traditional comparisons with mammals' populations over-passing their environments' limits, one can raise the comparison with two other caricature system of exponential growth: the exponential growth of a chick in its egg, and the equivalently exponential growth of a bacterial population in a (rotten) egg, both up to the limits of the egg. In one case the chick out of the egg growing into a chicken and exploring a universe much larger than the egg of origin; in... (read more)
I think that another component of the trade-off might be the possible competition (from the analysis point of view, not from the acting point of view) between various seed AI, or various seed AI technologies: an AI which hides its capacities might receive less resources than another seed AI which does not.