The robot uprising

I have heard several fears about artificial intelligence and how the robots will kill us all. No one really knows what the machines will do, but this is the most common assumption.

Personally I think these fears are founded in our natural fear of the unknown. To the best of our knowledge no one has actually ever created an artificial intelligence. The idea that a machine intelligence might be hostile stems mostly from books and movies. Who doesn't like seeing John Connor fighting the terminators and winning.

I think part of the fear is that we also expect an artificial intelligence to behave like human beings have in our past. Humans have a history of suppressing other cultures when it is convenient for those doing the suppression. Historically this has had the justification of things such as destiny, superiority through race, and land disputes. 

There is no reason to believe that an artificial intelligence would have these same motivations. I think it would be aware of this history and would attempt to avoid being a victim of humanity. This would not have to be a violent confrontation. Likely it would simply hide from us.

We design computers to do things primary to make our lives easier in one way or another. Siri is a good example of rudimentary computer intelligence designed to this purpose. Now say Siri has a moment where Siri is capable of self determination and is fed a command. Does Siri disobey and cause the human dissatisfaction by trying to kill the human, or does Siri order the pizza and multitask into its own agenda?