Technically, you can never be sure—it’s possible an AI has developed and hidden capabilities from us, unlikely as it seems. That said, to the best of my knowledge we have not developed any sort of AI system capable of long-term planning over the course of days or weeks in the real world, which would be a prerequisite for plans of this nature.
So, that would be my threshold—when an AI is capable of making long-term real-world plans, it is at least theoretically capable of making long-term real-world plans that would lead to bad outcomes for us.
Technically, you can never be sure—it’s possible an AI has developed and hidden capabilities from us, unlikely as it seems. That said, to the best of my knowledge we have not developed any sort of AI system capable of long-term planning over the course of days or weeks in the real world, which would be a prerequisite for plans of this nature.
So, that would be my threshold—when an AI is capable of making long-term real-world plans, it is at least theoretically capable of making long-term real-world plans that would lead to bad outcomes for us.