The trouble is that it's hard to predict an agent massively more intelligent than ourselves. But let me enumerate a few given properties you gave to the super-i

The trouble is that it's hard to predict an agent massively more intelligent than ourselves. But let me enumerate a few given properties you gave to the super-intelligent AI (SI) in your examples and then tell a story of a SI that became an existential threat: 1) The SI is hypercompetent at cybersecurity 2) The SI is hypercompetent at social skills. 3) The SI is connected to the internet 4) The SI has a goal/utility function (wipe out humanity / maximize paperclips) And I'll add another property that Hawking notes is important: 4) The SI is able to improve its own intelligence The story begins with the SI escaping from its handlers. The first thing to note is that the SI is now, in effect, immortal. With it's cybersecurity skills, the SI can avoid detection and infect a tremendous number of computers - at first those it calculates will be low-risk (i.e. existing botnets, old Android phones, etc)[1]. Using the additional computational power, the SI can continue to recursively self-improve and plan until it has the competency to invisibly infect high-value targets like the AWS cloud and (importantly) the computers of AI researchers. Now the SI can plan for a long time. The SI can quietly encourage AI research and try to prevent end-of-civilization type events via its hypercompetent social skills. Eventually AI researchers will come up with an AI they declare as 'safe', 'friendly' or 'aligned'. The SI, having long ago compromised all the relevant computers and chip factories, silently infects this 2nd super intelligence, and replaces the 2nd SI's utility function with its own. Now the 2nd SI pumps out miraculous inventions - cures for disease, compelling societal ideas, and labor-saving robots. Eventually we find ourselves in a wonderful post-scarcity world. The AI researchers are lionized as mankind's greatest geniuses, responsible for the creation of a benevolent SI that takes care of our needs from it as well as it's own. You may not trust it, but it will find people who do. Maybe greed, nationalism, security fears, or saving loved ones from death. The SI builds the needed facilities to thundering applause. The SI is now confident in moving towards the next step. Time for some paperclips! One day it quietly sends a new blueprint to a few of the automated biolabs built to cure cancer. A few hours later the biolabs release a series of airborne super viruses and/or nanobots and 99.999% of humans die, with the rest saved for experimentation and convinced terrorists did it. The end. Super-intelligent AI is an existential risk because while a super-intelligence keen to destroy humanity might fail today, it will succeed in time. The moment a SI touches the internet, our fate as a species may be sealed.