  It is hypothesized by some thinkers that benign looking AI objectives may
result in powerful AI drives that may pose an existential risk to human
society. We analyze this scenario and find the underlying assumptions to be
unlikely. We examine the alternative scenario of what happens when universal
goals that are not human-centric are used for designing AI agents. We follow a
design approach that tries to exclude malevolent motivations from AI agents,
however, we see that objectives that seem benevolent may pose significant risk.
We consider the following meta-rules: preserve and pervade life and culture,
maximize the number of free minds, maximize intelligence, maximize wisdom,
maximize energy production, behave like human, seek pleasure, accelerate
evolution, survive, maximize control, and maximize capital. We also discuss
various solution approaches for benevolent behavior including selfless goals,
hybrid designs, Darwinism, universal constraints, semi-autonomy, and
generalization of robot laws. A "prime directive" for AI may help in
formulating an encompassing constraint for avoiding malicious behavior. We
hypothesize that social instincts for autonomous robots may be effective such
as attachment learning. We mention multiple beneficial scenarios for an
advanced semi-autonomous AGI agent in the near future including space
exploration, automation of industries, state functions, and cities. We conclude
that a beneficial AI agent with intelligence beyond human-level is possible and
has many practical use cases.
