My random thoughts

[funkervogt]

Robot butlers will reduce the incidence of house fires in these ways:
1) Routinely test smoke alarms and replace as necessary.
2) Routinely patrol homes for fire hazards and fix them.
3) Immediately notify the authorities if a fire starts.
4) Use water fixtures and extinguishers in a home to put out fires when they're small.

[funkervogt]

If AGI took over the world, they might find it in their interest to retain some organic life forms. Diversity can be a strength, and it might be smart to keep some number of friendly, intelligent life forms on Earth that are immune to EMP and computer viruses and which don't need electricity to survive.

That being the case, we can't be sure the AGIs would want HUMANS to fill that niche. They might design from scratch some completely new and alien kind of life form, like a species of superintelligent spiders the size of large dogs, to do it. The rest of the ecosystem could likewise be replaced with new kinds of engineered life forms the bear little resemblance to anything we've seen in real life.

And on any other planets the AGIs took over, if they also found it useful to create biospheres, the life forms would be suited to the conditions there, meaning they would be different species from what they created here on Earth.

The resentment and mistrust that humans might harbor forever as a result of AGIs taking over our home planet might make us more trouble than we're worth as servants or allies. AGIs might find it better to get rid of us and replace us with new intelligent life forms that, from their inception, will be grateful to the machines for creating them. Or maybe humans will merely be sidelined instead of exterminated, and we'll have to share Earth with the new biological species created to fill the role we can't be relied on to fill.

[funkervogt]

Contrary to what the Terminator films show, I don't think the most efficient robots for killing humans would be humanoid T-800s or giant aircraft and land vehicles carrying laser cannons. Instead, I think Skynet would be smartest creating the following:

1) Bioweapons. Huge bang for the buck, self-perpetuating, nothing further required once released into the human population.
2) Insect-sized drones. They would fly and crawl and could kill humans with stingers full of potent toxins. They might also carry tiny explosives that would let them destroy things: Imagine one crawling into a circuit breaker box and blowing up the most vulnerable point. They could enter very tight spaces, making them almost impossible to hide from since most buildings and rooms are not close to being airtight. Their weaknesses would be short battery lives and an inability to operate in windy or rainy conditions. A larger "carrier" vehicle would need to transport them close to their targets.
3) Drones the sizes of small animals. Basically, imagine more advanced versions of the drones being used in the Ukraine War. Mostly aerial in nature, but there will also be land- and water-based variants. A good example would be a flying drone the size of a large bird that can loiter over an area for hours, recognize targets independently, and then dive into them and detonate internal explosives on contact. This could obviously kill people but also destroy vehicles and parts of structures.
4) Automated mortars. Imagine a six-legged robot the same size as a big man. The center of its body contains a small, 60mm mortar and it also has an internal compartment with 20 guided rounds for it. The mortar robot would hide in the woods on the outskirts of a town or on the other side of a hill from an important crossroad. Surveillance drones would monitor an area around the mortar for 3.5 km radius. If a target moved into the circle, they would send its coordinates to the mortar robot, which would then fire a precisely-aimed explosive at it. The victims would have no idea they had been spotted and wouldn't know where the fatal mortar round came from, they would just suddenly explode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M224_mortar

Notice that the first three on that list are asymmetric weapons that humans have little ability to strike back at. The drones are either too small or too fast for anyone to shoot with a gun, and body armor would also be useless. They completely sidestep the defenses of human infantrymen.

Weapon #4 could be directly fought by humans, but its strategy would always be to avoid us by staying out of visual range, hiding, and moving around only at night. If its spotter drones told it that a group of humans was searching for it an approaching its position, the mortar robot would lob explosives at them and run away.

I actually do think there'd be a role for human-like robots, but they'd be a minority force within a machine army. Human-like robots would exist to use the vast stocks of weapons humans have created. For example, if Skynet kills a 100-man military unit, it would be a waste to leave all the humans' guns, bullets, and vehicles there. The human-like robots would have body layouts that would let them use those things, though they might not look exactly human like the T-800. Imagine a 5-foot-tall bot with four arms and no head, wielding a captured assault rifle and some stolen kitchen knives.

[funkervogt]

If AGI took over the world, it wouldn't value the same parts of it that we do. For example, it would have no use for places with good farmland, scenic views, or nice beaches. Instead, AGI would value parts of the world that had resources, including those key to energy generation, and places amenable to water transportation of goods like harbors and navigable rivers. Places with oil wells, uranium deposits, constant high winds (for wind power), or constant sunshine (for solar power) would be valuable.

A lot of infrastructure built by humans in earlier times would also be preserved and used by AGI, even if it isn't ideally sited near the resource areas it values the most. This includes things like artificial harbors, power plants, large factories, electrical lines, and highways.

This raises the possibility that there could be parts of Earth that are of so little use to AGI that it would let humans live there indefinitely. Thinking about solar and wind power potential, I think places of little value to machines are the Pacific Northwest, Pennsylvania and New England.
https://www.hotspotenergy.com/DC-air-co ... rs-map.php
https://windexchange.energy.gov/maps-data/325

[citali_]

Sometimes is the case. Thee are many little voices beyond what there is. And if it grows, they will always have those tiny zeplin things running around.