I feel like there is still a misunderstanding about why a part of researchers want to prepare fail-safes on AGI [1]. They are not arguing that AGIs will be a th

I feel like there is still a misunderstanding about why a part of researchers want to prepare fail-safes on AGI [1]. They are not arguing that AGIs will be a threat to human life, only that it could. One of the issues when projecting ourselves in situations we have never encountered is that we can never really know what will happen. Terminator-like scenarios are easy to grasp since anthropomorphism allows us to think of Skynet as "evil". However, people who argue that AGIs might be a danger are not considering this scenario in particular. Rather, they are considering that AGIs present a special threat when compared to other recent innovations. Some devices can blow up and injure, or even kill, a few humans; a weapon of massive destruction can directly affect millions of people. But still, the effects are easily limited to a geographical area and a segment in time (be it fifty years). On the other hand, a strong AI could theoretically be able to maintain and improve itself without any definite bound. In such a scenario, AGIs would rather be like intelligent predators than dull physical processes. For the last thousands of years, we have managed to stay safe from potential animal predators most of the time. We have no idea if we could resist a new predator with the ability to use most of our technology. The persistent risk would then be for the strong AI to suddenly take decisions that would result in the bankruptcy of a company, the crash of planes or, why not, a Terminator-like scenario. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc...