When you say "provides no mechanism by which that could happen", do you mean they don't provide a specific strategy that the AI would use to kill us? Would you change your mind if they did provide one?
It doesn’t matter if this specific idea has flaws. The ASI will have lots more and plenty of patience to try them out.
Maybe it lies about a vaccines effectiveness. Maybe it’s not really a vaccine.
Maybe it cheats at an election and gets someone hired that will likely unknowingly help the ASI.
Maybe it strings together a thousand ideas that all look safe taken one by one, but cause effects that interact to cause massive problems.
You can’t imagine what it’s capable of. You simply aren’t smart enough. No one is.
This is one of many examples of the general truth that if some entity or group is better at science and at long-range planning than people are, that entity or group is a threat to people.
Maybe it lies about a vaccines effectiveness. Maybe it’s not really a vaccine.
Maybe it cheats at an election and gets someone hired that will likely unknowingly help the ASI.
Maybe it strings together a thousand ideas that all look safe taken one by one, but cause effects that interact to cause massive problems.
You can’t imagine what it’s capable of. You simply aren’t smart enough. No one is.