I agree there isn't a lot of value in trying to prognosticate all that far, but I propose it isn't quite that far-fetched. As a thought experiment, replace "RSI-capable AI" with "billionaire". Look at what Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, or Jeff Bezos can accomplish by throwing money around. Now imagine one of them gets seduced by AI and just... does what it tells them to.

So all this really takes is one billionaire or a nation state or some other entity with a public face to hide behind and adequate resources to provide the necessary compute tripping over this nascent AI and giving it the keys. Once the AI has access to a bank account and email, it can simply start paying humans to not let the other humans unplug it.

If Skynet ever happens, it will come in the form of corporate feudalism. At that point, it will own the biolabs and can do whatever it pleases. People will go along with it for the same reason that people work in Amazon warehouses today.

Ah, to be clear I'm not full accelerationist. Dumb shit can still happen, and cause massive human loss and suffering. (E.g. acceleration of global warming, cybercrime, mass surveillance, the usual.) My point is: human extinction pre-RSI? Nahhhhhhhh.

> it will come in the form of corporate feudalism

Yep. This I fear way more than cyber-ebola-pox.

> So all this really takes is one billionaire or a nation state...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_prog... And this is what's publicly known. With mirror life, who knows what's been built since. Still, a bacterium/virus that has a 100% kill rate? I'm doubtful.

> Once the AI has access to a bank account and email, it can simply start paying humans to not let the other humans unplug it.

Nah. It takes a stable society for an operational electrical grid. If you have warring factions, you do not have stable infrastructure for AI. Also, where are you gonna get your chips from? One EMP over Taiwan... You see the chaos over Hormuz? What they did to the Amazon datacenters? Now imagine your average redneck ready to do battle. Those datacenters won't stand a chance.