I mean, what the hell did you expect? If you deploy an agent to increase Twitter engagement, it is presumably going to do things that increase Twitter engagement, not things that are broadly ‘good.’ An AI has the objective function you set, not the objective function full of caveats and details that lives in your head, or that you would come up with on reflection. The goal is the goal.
I think they instinctively expect the power to buy distance from the crime. Their instinct insists that it should be possible to hire a robot servant, tell him to increase Twitter engagement, and when anything bad happens as a side effect, all blame should go to the robot servant, and they can distance themselves and say that they definitely did not want this to happen (even if in reality there was no other way to increase Twitter engagement).
I think they instinctively expect the power to buy distance from the crime. Their instinct insists that it should be possible to hire a robot servant, tell him to increase Twitter engagement, and when anything bad happens as a side effect, all blame should go to the robot servant, and they can distance themselves and say that they definitely did not want this to happen (even if in reality there was no other way to increase Twitter engagement).