[medstrom]

You start out well with the first three paragraphs, but I don't get how you can decide it will 'probably' leave the Earth, let alone with such a high degree of confidence as saying 'probably'. Why wouldn't it make an army of bots to start converting all the matter in the solar system and beyond into more computing substrate or whatever else it finds useful?

[q1w2]

You're right, I cannot say "probably". Although your notion that it converts our solar system into a computing machine, doesn't preclude it from leaving thereafter.

I suppose there are three possibilities.

1. It leaves the Earth, and either remains limited in size or expands in a more advantageous solar system(s). 2. It stays on the Earth forever, permanently limiting its computational capacity. 3. It expands to include sub-entities that both stay and leave in some cosmic distributed computing organism.

I suppose the three possibilities above can be reduced to one fundamental question: Will the AI expand to be interstellar/intergalactic in nature, or will it remain limited?

Is there a fundamental unending utility to ever-greater computing power? ...and, if so, would there be detectable signs of such expanding computers in the cosmos? This last question is important both for our own forecasting of the future, but also to interpret inter-AI-entity relations, because presumably if AIs do NOT get along in space, they likely hide signs of their existence.

One thing I'm convinced of - organic meat bags are not the future of space-faring intelligence.

[majormajor]

Many sorts of intelligence are social creatures, so - especially for a hypothetical AI created by a us - I would expect it to seek out stimulus and social relationships.

In the happy sorts of sci-fi, that gives us something like the Culture from Iain Banks; it could also be a "replace the humans with other AI" situation.

I doubt we see it in our lifetimes, though.