AGI gets built by a farming company
Okay, sounds fine, keep going.
gets programmed to farm more corn
Yep, this makes sense to me.
but there is no stop condition programmed in
Definitely sounds like something that could happen, with you so far.
so converts ever available land into corn fields
...and you lost me. I'm not sure how we ended up here.
The AI you're postulating is 1) intelligent and capable enough to be called "AGI" and arbitrarily terraform land into a useful field for corn, yet 2) dumb and inept enough to interpret its instructions absolutely literally, like a magic genie; meanwhile 3) the collective capability of the human species is apparently insufficient to stop this from happening.
I guess that could happen. But I take it about as seriously as alien life trying to invade us, a random meteorite killing us all, a solar flare destroying the Earth or malicious time travelers. Each of these what if scenarios also have a sensible build up followed by a giant leap in suspension of disbelief, and concluding in disaster. That's not a framework for intelligent discussion and productive rationality, it's a self-indulgent and conceptually incoherent exercise in mental gymnastics. While we're at it we could argue about how many angels will fit on the head of a pin. If I start a news cycle about how quantum computers will allow us build nanotechnology that can hack human brains, does my idea have any credibility? It could happen, right?
Our current capability with respect to artificial intelligence is so far removed from any reasonable form of strong AI that there isn't even a recognizable path forward. Established leaders in the field like Yann LeCun have publicly stated deep learning will not take us there. We don't even know how to consistently and rigorously define strong AI, let alone conjecture about how it would work or what its theoretical danger would be. That means we're trying to extrapolate the properties of hypothetical nuclear weapons from gunpowder. We are effectively children grasping in the dark, getting hysterical about a monster that may or may not be lurking under our collective beds. We can't agree on what the monster looks like, we don't have a rational explanation for why we believe it exists, but we heard the floor creak and we've seen plenty of depictions of monsters in fiction that sound sort of logical.
Even if the smartest hypothetical AI can perfectly extrapolate the mental states of every human who ever lived, we still die in a cloud of nanobots if it isn't programmed ever-so-carefully to care about what we want.
Your argument, as I understand it, is that something intelligent and capable will only interpret its "instructions" absolutely literally. That's not the way I look at it.
It's not that another intelligence won't be able to understand what our "real goals" are. It's that it won't care - whatever it is programmed to do is, quite literally, its goal/value system.
I mean, we don't have to get exotic here - look at humans. We very clearly evolved to find sex pleasureable in order to spread our genes; just as clearly, many humans, while completely understanding the purpose of sex being pleasurable, continue to have sex without any attempt to spread their genes by using birth control.
And just as equally, while most other humans have more-or-less the same value system as I do, I think you'd be hard pressed to convince me that there have never been humans who have tried to do things I disagree with and wouldn't want to happen. And that's just humans. It's pretty clear that if certain people were more capable, a lot of bad things would've happened (at least from my point of view).
Basically, the idea that intelligence infers a value system is something I've been long convinced is untrue, and I'm not sure why you think otherwise.
> meanwhile 3) the collective capability of the human species is apparently insufficient to stop this from happening.
Well, I'm hoping we aren't. But in order to stop it, we need to do something, and clearly most people aren't even convinced there's a real threat. Hopefully, we can stop an unsafe AGI before it gets built, and also hopefully, we can stop it after it exists. But if you're just assuming that we'll be able to stop it after it has already started to do things against our interest, I think you're being optimistic - even humanity has already created weapons that, had we decided to really use them, could've destroyed all other humans before they had a chance to respond.
> But I take it about as seriously as alien life trying to invade us, a random meteorite killing us all, a solar flare destroying the Earth or malicious time travelers.
Some of those things are more fanciful. But, some of those are real threats, e.g. random meteorite. It has wiped out entire species before. I agree we shouldn't be very scared of a low probability event that we can't control, but that's the difference - we can control AGI, before it gets built, and it doesn't appear to be low probability. Not to mention, most people agree that we should get off this planet to protect against meteorites, too!
As for aliens - if you were truly convinced that aliens would visit the Earth in 200 years - are you really telling me it wouldn't change anything about what you think humanity should be doing? I for one think we would definitely be spending time in preparing for that. And that's more-or-less how I look at AGI - we're creating an alien that will visit us between 50-1000 years from now, and we're not really sure when exactly. What should we do to prepare?
What kind of credible scenario are you looking for? You're obviously knowledgeable about the subject, I'm sure you've read various stories, but it's quite easy to dismiss them all as "not credible" or "just so stories". E.g. A good story is Tegmark's story at the beginning of the book Life 3.0, but again, can be easily dismissed if you don't specify acceptance criteria for the story.
I mean, simple scenario - AGI gets built by a farming company, gets programmed to farm more corn, but there is no stop condition programmed in, so converts ever available land into corn fields. Is it likely? No, of course not - no specific example is likely. But why is this something that fundamentally can't happen? More importantly, can you specify criteria for a scenario which you would deem acceptable? Cause if not, you're literally saying that there is no possible way to convince you that this is a possibility, which seems to me not to be a good position on pretty much anything.