Human were already on the path to doing this without any help by AI. We already have the potentially world ending threats of both nuclear war and climate change, I am yet to be convinced that AI is actually more dangerous than either of those.
We currently hold all the agency. We have the potential to fix those. They’re not binary. We can slow/reverse climate impact and you can have a small nuclear war. Creating AI is a one-way function and once it exists, climate change or nuclear war or biological impact or survival become an outcome of what the AI does. We hand it our agency, for good or ill.
Wait, what? Why is AI unlimited? There are many constraints like the speed of information, calculation, available memory, etc. Where does it cross into the physical world? And at what scale? Is it going to mine iron unnoticed or something? How will it get raw materials to build an army? Firewalls and air gapped systems are all suddenly worthless because AI has some instant and unbounded intelligence? The militaries of the world watch while eating hot dogs?
A lot of things CAN happen but I'm confused when people state things as if they WILL. If you're that much of an oracle tell me which stonk to buy so I can go on holiday.
Authoritarian, mendacious and unpredictable. Controls a lot of resources (i.e. space launchers, satellites with unknown capabilities, robotic vehicles, supercomputers, propaganda machines). Considers himself above the government.
When was the last time Musk abducted 15,000+ children and force migrated them? Used the resources of a nation to invade a neighboring country with the aim of conquest? Come on, just admit that you were wrong to put them on the same level of your pyramid of people you hate.
There's no hard limit on existential threats, we can keep adding more until one blows up and destroys us. Even if AI is less dangerous than nuclear destruction, that's not too comforting.
To call climate change 'world ending' is rather disingenuous given that the world has been significantly hotter and colder than what it is now just in the last 100k years.
It was never this hot within millions of years and differentiating between a world ending event and one that destroys economies and societies and eventually most life on the planet is disingenuous in itself
Sure it seems like a possible scenario but if it's a great filter it will have to do that every time and never survive to spread to the stars. If it does spread to the stars it will potentially conquer the galaxy quite quickly.