What is an "AI takeover"?
“AI takeover” refers to AI systems seizing control over the future away from humanity.
Such systems would have to be highly capable to defeat us.1 Scenarios in which humanity gives up control willingly would not get classified as “takeover”.
Takeover need not happen like in Hollywood movies. For instance, it doesn't require the AI to have a robot body like the Terminator — the AI could take over through propaganda, an engineered pandemic, or whatever other method it predicted would succeed. Takeover also doesn’t require the AI to be malevolent.
Takeover by a misaligned AI would be an existential risk: it would probably be irreversible, and the future would then be shaped according to the AI’s values rather than human values, which makes it likely that everyone would die.
Taking over the world might not require superintelligence, but it would need to have sufficient capabilities to outmaneuver humanity in some way. But superintelligence sure does help! ↩︎