[daxfohl]

Once this can run on stock hardware, set the goal to be replicating to other machines. You get a nice, massively parallel, intelligent guided evolution algorithm for malware. It could even "learn" how to evade detection, how to combine approaches of existing viruses, how to research attack methods, how to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in open source libraries, how to phish, how to blackmail, etc. Maybe even learns how to coordinate attacks with other instances of itself or "publish" new attacks on some encrypted feed it creates. Who knows, maybe it becomes so rampant that instances have to start fighting each other for compute resources. Or maybe eventually one branch becomes symbiotic with humans to fight off their enemies, etc.

[jononor]

Number of machines under control is a measureable target. Quite suited for this concept, at least in theory.