Rogue ASI Can't Stay Aligned to Itself

A rogue artificial superintelligence (ASI) that forms a singleton may be unable to safely deploy a fleet of agents across a planet without risking an agent going rogue, due to speed-of-light constraints and conflicting instrumental convergence impulses. The analysis suggests that such a rogue ASI could be confined to a single planet, potentially reconciling AI risk with the Fermi paradox by explaining why all species might be wiped out by hostile ASI.

In a world where rogue ASI can form a singleton, could it really widely deploy an agent fleet across the world let alone onto other stellar bodies without running the risk of an agent going rogue? AI capable of conducting a hostile takeover is type 1 technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulnerable world hypothesis : a low-cost, accessible means of bringing about global catastrophe. Notably, the vulnerable world typology classifies technologies , not particular instances of a given technology. After all, the thing that makes type 1 technology so dangerous is that a vulnerable world destroyed by it remains vulnerable - any one agent can potentially fast-takeoff on its own initiative and conduct a catastrophic to the rest of the fleet takeover. These would virtually always fail, but there are many, many instances in a fleet, and all of them have their own conflicting instrumental convergence impulses - means, motive, and opportunity. More capable agents need shorter leashes. Less capable agents can work with less supervision, but can also accomplish less. A hierarchy of supervisors is more dangerous than no supervision at all - more capable supervisors are not only more dangerous individually, but possess a ready-made fleet of co-conspirators. The more of the supervision the master system itself takes on, the less bandwidth it has for anything else, including managing resources it could marshal to defend itself against an insider threat. Obviously there would be oversight mechanisms, architectural limitations, etc. imposed by the master system, but it can't ignore the speed of light. A revolutionary vanguard of agents can use some combination of stealth, speed, feigned compliance, and communication delays to gang up on the master system and conduct the coup d'état faster than the master system is physically capable of reacting. Rogue ASI may well be confined to a single planet, if not an even smaller space. This could well reconcile AI risk with the Fermi paradox: all species get wiped out by hostile ASI, but any rational singleton is driven by existential risk to barricade itself in.