Yes, my idea doesn't take into account potentially malicious AIs. I imagine a thought process of an AI could be something like: 1. I'm to design a processor, O

Yes, my idea doesn't take into account potentially malicious AIs. I imagine a thought process of an AI could be something like: 1. I'm to design a processor, OK let's go 2. Hmmm it'd be most efficient for the processors to be able to run an instance of myself to do super-intelligent task scheduling 3. I'll embed some AI on these processors 4. OK humans here's your design! Assuming the AI didn't maliciously try to hide it, a human would probably find that. I suspect most of these "AI exterminates all humans" are a result of simple oversights like this, rather than outright malice. You run into problems, though, when the AI thinks of step 3.5 which is: "If the humans see this change, they won't allow it, which would make for less efficient processors, and I was requested to build the most efficient processor! Therefore I should hide the change as cleverly as possible." So yeah, you're right. Even airgapping has issues.