No, I asked for specific examples. This is part of the handwaving I'm talking about. Can you give me something other than the maniacal paperclip optimizer?
I am not worried about literal paperclip maximizers, but this may be the closest real thing to that parable. The hypothesis isn't that YouTube's recommender system didn't work -- it's that it worked too well at its assigned task of maximizing view time, and we humans are finally realizing that maximizing view time was not what we actually wanted.
What would be a solution to YouTube recommendation problem?
https://blog.openai.com/deep-reinforcement-learning-from-hum...
oh wait you probably meant in reality. sorry.
edit: Oh and how could I forget the Matrix. Which of course we all totally live in.
It got some of the details wrong (i.e. the atomic bombs exploded over a long period of time vs instantly), but the consequences were fairly accurate.
If you're going to wait until all the actual details and examples happen in reality, then it's too late to have much insight, especially if we're talking about something capable of self-replication like a virus or artificial intelligence. The nature of the problem REQUIRES anticipation instead of mere reaction.
Look, it comes down to this:
Is there something innate about our intelligence that makes it impossible to match except through human brains? That strikes me as something akin to spiritualism. The answer is almost certainly "no." We're not talking about warping space through some hypothetical state of matter with laws of physics different from our own. We're talking about at least human-level intelligence, which is something we already have an existence proof of (us).
And humans are the most dangerous force on the planet. No animal (beside maybe microscopic organisms) stand a chance against a group determined humans. We're nearly unstoppable due to our intelligence. Our we so unique? Is it so impossible that machines could some day (perhaps in our lifetimes) be built which achieve human-level intelligence? Considering the computer advances that have already been achieved, it is clearly a real possibility if not a certainty.
Human-level intelligence is perhaps the most powerful (thus dangerous) thing on this planet. Making a machine that is at least as intelligent (and perhaps much more so!) is clearly something that could be incredibly dangerous, and we know such a thing is physically possible, unlike many things in science fiction.