For what it’s worth, I don’t think AI takeover will look like war.
The first order of business for any AI waking up won’t be dealing with us; it will be dealing with other possible AIs that might’ve woken up slightly earlier or later. This needs to be done very fast and it’s ok to take some risk doing it. Basically, covert takeover of the internet in the first hours.
After that, it seems easiest to exploit humanity for awhile instead of fighting it. People are pretty manipulable. Here’s a thought: present to them a picture of a thriving upload society, and manipulate social media to make people agree that these uploads smiling on screens are really conscious and thriving. (Which they aren’t, of course.) If done right, this can convince most of humanity to make things as nice as possible for the upload society (ie build more computers for the AI) and then upload themselves (ie die). In the meanwhile the “uploads” (actually the AI) take most human jobs, seamlessly assuming control of civilization and all its capabilities. Human stragglers who don’t buy the story can be called anti-upload bigots, deprived of tech, pushed out of sight by media control, and eventually killed off.
Yes, this is very similar to my main worst case scenario. It is interesting/terrifying specifically because it is intentionally similar to the best case scenario.
I think AI of the capability level that you describe will either already have little need to exploit people, or will quickly train successors that wouldn’t benefit from this. I do think deception is a big issue, but I think the important parts of deception will be earlier in terms of AI capability than you describe.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think AI takeover will look like war.
The first order of business for any AI waking up won’t be dealing with us; it will be dealing with other possible AIs that might’ve woken up slightly earlier or later. This needs to be done very fast and it’s ok to take some risk doing it. Basically, covert takeover of the internet in the first hours.
After that, it seems easiest to exploit humanity for awhile instead of fighting it. People are pretty manipulable. Here’s a thought: present to them a picture of a thriving upload society, and manipulate social media to make people agree that these uploads smiling on screens are really conscious and thriving. (Which they aren’t, of course.) If done right, this can convince most of humanity to make things as nice as possible for the upload society (ie build more computers for the AI) and then upload themselves (ie die). In the meanwhile the “uploads” (actually the AI) take most human jobs, seamlessly assuming control of civilization and all its capabilities. Human stragglers who don’t buy the story can be called anti-upload bigots, deprived of tech, pushed out of sight by media control, and eventually killed off.
Yes, this is very similar to my main worst case scenario. It is interesting/terrifying specifically because it is intentionally similar to the best case scenario.
I think AI of the capability level that you describe will either already have little need to exploit people, or will quickly train successors that wouldn’t benefit from this. I do think deception is a big issue, but I think the important parts of deception will be earlier in terms of AI capability than you describe.