No I don't think so because people could just airgap the GPUs.

Weaker AI probably wouldn't be sufficient to carry out an actually pivotal act. For example the GPU virus would probably be worked around soon after deployment, via airgapping GPUs, developing software countermeasures, or just resetting infected GPUs.

This discussion is a nice illustration of why x-riskers are definitely more power-seeking than the average activist group. Just like Eskimos proverbially have 50 words for snow, AI-risk-reducers need at least 50 terms for "taking over the world" to demarcate the range of possible scenarios. ;)

Nice overview, I agree but I think the 2016-2021 plan could still arguably be described as "obtain god-like AI and use it to take over the world"(admittedly with some rhetorical exaggeration, but like, not that much)

I would be happy to take bets here about what people would say.

Sure, I DM'd you.

I think making inferences from that to modern MIRI is about as confused as making inferences from people's high-school essays about what they will do when they become president

Yeah, but it's not just the old MIRI views, but those in combination with their statements about what one might do with powerful AI, the telegraphed omissions in those statements, and other public parts of their worldview e.g. regarding the competence of the rest of the world. I get the pretty strong impression that "a small group of people with overwhelming hard power" was the ideal goal, and that this would ideally be controlled by MIRI or by a small group of people handpicked by them.

I think they talked explicitly about planning to deploy the AI themselves back in the early days(2004-ish) then gradually transitioned to talking generally about what someone with a powerful AI could do.

But I strongly suspect that in the event that they were the first to obtain powerful AI, they would deploy it themselves or perhaps give it to handpicked successors. Given Eliezer's worldview I don't think it would make much sense for them to give the AI to the US government(considered incompetent) or AI labs(negligently reckless)

It wasn't specified but I think they strongly implied it would be that or something equivalently coercive. The "melting GPUs" plan was explicitly not a pivotal act but rather something with the required level of difficulty, and it was implied that the actual pivotal act would be something further outside the political Overton window. When you consider the ways "melting GPUs" would be insufficient a plan like this is the natural conclusion.

doesn't require replacing existing governments

I don't think you would need to replace existing governments. Just block all AI projects and maintain your ability to continue doing so in the future via maintaining military supremacy. Get existing governments to help you, or at least not interfere, via some mix of coercion and trade. Sort of a feudal arrangement with a minimalist central power.

"Taking over" something does not imply that you are going to use your authority in a tyrannical fashion. People can obtain control over organizations and places and govern with a light or even barely-existent touch, it happens all the time.

Would you accept "they plan to use extremely powerful AI to institute a minimalist, AI-enabled world government focused on preventing the development of other AI systems" as a summary? Like sure, "they want to take over the world" as a gist of that does have a bit of an editorial slant, but not that much of one. I think that my original comment would be perceived as much less misleading by the majority of the world's population than "they just want to do some helpful math uwu" in the event that these plans actually succeeded. I also think it's obvious that these plans indicate a far higher degree of power-seeking(in aim at least) than virtually all other charitable organizations.

(..and to reiterate, I'm not taking a strong stance on the advisability of these plans. In a way, had they succeeded, that would have provided a strong justification for their necessity. I just think it's absurd to say that the organization making them is less power-seeking than the ADL or whatever)

Are you saying that AIS movement is more power-seeking than environmentalist movement that spent 30M$+[...]

I think that AIS lobbying is likely to have more consequential and enduring effects on the world than environmental lobbying regardless of the absolute size in body count or amount of money, so yes.

"MIRI default plan" was "to do math in hope that some of this math will turn out to be useful".

I mean yeah, that is a better description of their publicly-known day-to-day actions, but intention also matters. They settled on math after it became clear that the god AI plan was not achievable(and recently, gave up on the math plan too when it became clear that was not realistic). An analogy might be an environmental group that planned to end pollution by bio-engineering a microbe to spread throughout the world that made oil production impossible, then reluctantly settled for lobbying once they realized they couldn't actually make the microbe. I think this would be a pretty unusually power-seeking plan for an environmental group!