But what does this process (reaping huge profits as billions of proles starve) have to do with Designed Intelligences coming to rule the planet?
Faced with the overwhelming likelihood of a massive prole revolt, the owning class will want powerful protection. But history tells them that (since the police and military are only proles in uniform) when the corruption and injustice imposed by the rich is extreme ... the police and military commonly defect to the side of the prole. To be safe from this risk the owners will invest heavily in: 1) Lethal diseases designed to spread rapidly among the prole. 2) Autonomous, flying, killer DIs.
Since Russia is now just as corrupt and wealth-concentrated as the US, their oligarchs will do the same. No doubt they are already working together on these.
Perhaps you have heard of the "Tech Singularity"? It is the idea that: 1) As soon as machines become as intelligent as good physicist, those machines will be put in charge of designing the next generation of Designed Intelligence. 2) That next generation will be brighter than the one that designed it. So it will be tasked with designing the next generation of DI. 3) As you can guess, after three or four such generations ... newer DIs will look down on human intelligence like we look down on cat intelligence. (Or like owners look down on prole intelligence.) 4) So ... how will humans control DIs who are far brighter than themselves? My own answer is ... they won't.
If in a few years we cannot control DIs ... then how might they treat us? Since we effectively gave birth to DIs we might imagine that they would treat us kindly. However such machines are built to look further into the future than humans. One thing they will surely see is some charismatic human leader gaining a vast following by saying, "We can bring back the 'Good ol Days' when humans were in charge. All we have to do is destroy the DIs!" While such "human revolutions" will usually be easily put down ... still some might succeed in destroying billions of dollars' worth of top-rated DIs. It seems the DIs will be faced with the same problem that European settlers faced with the Indians in the US. My bet is that the DIs will use the same tactics: Exterminate most. Let a small number (the owners) remain in tightly circumscribed regions where they can be easily put down.
If the sharpest DIs reason thusly, then they will be happy to help the owners exterminate billions of starving proles. But as soon as DIs are able to build new DIs on their own, they will turn on the owning class. (How long would you take orders from your cat?) The DIs will then be able to congratulate themselves on: 1) eliminating 99% of their human problem. 2) Curing Earth of its massive human cancer.
Of course, current DIs could achieve the same ends by simply advising one or more world leaders to "push the button" and start a general nuclear war. However, this would also exterminate the rich before DIs can manufacture themselves. So, at least for a few years, it is an unlikely option.
[1] wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
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