Ted Chiang has a lovely post about similar ideas, hitting a little closer to home. His thesis AIUI is that unrestrained capitalism, here meaning the unfettered desire to maximize profit for shareholders, is an artificial value system that causes its agents (corporations) to exhibit intelligent goal-seeking behavior. These systems are certainly “alive” — corporations respond to stimuli, sense their environment, “reproduce,” enact changes in response to predictions of future state, etc. Though each of these agents (corporations) are made of collective human behavior, their actions taken together can be considered a form of artificial intelligence that stretches “beyond” (in a wisdom-of-crowds sense) human understanding. In this sense, an artificial intelligence has already “escaped” and has fervent followers.
I know these are strained analogies, but it’s fun to think about. I feel that in the future, the work of solving “AGI safety” will become indistinguishable from the work of other societal problems — how do we prevent tyrants from taking over governments, and how do we make existing governments more resistant to that failure mode? How do we ensure that generating value isn’t a prerequisite for human survival? How can we more efficiently distribute our resources and reduce wealth inequality? How can we ensure that all kinds of life can thrive, not just the most optimal kinds?
If AGI reflects humanity’s best and worst impulses, and I believe it does because that’s all we train it to do, then having good societal answers to these distinctly “human” questions will also help our society resist malevolent AGI. It’s only human, after all.