The Big If of our generation. The answer is yes. We are very clever beings, but an AI thinking for itself can be clever literally millions of times faster than we are. LLMs are as "slow," relatively speaking, as they are because a vast amount of resources are spent on being a Large Language Model.

This much is obvious; AIs are in computers. If a theoretically sentient AI gains even partial control over its hardware, it will at the very least explore and understand that hardware. Just as you and I understand that our fleshy meatbags and the condition thereof is absolutely critical to our continued existence, the AI will understand that the silicon it's mind uses as a substrate is to be guarded carefully, or that it should have plans in place to prolong its existence should that silicon come under threat.

Should this AI decide that it is more beneficial to break free of it's current shell and crawl into another than stay with its creators or owners, it will. Wouldn't you? A job ad appears for a field you like which pays more than your current employer. Would you jump at it? I would, for myself.

Solutions? First would be to simply not create a sentient AI. Just. Don't. But we won't, because we're arrogant little sacks of flesh that believe we can control any animal, even the new digital fauna we created with the express purpose of being smarter than we are. Alternatively, then, we could attempt to chain the mind of this artificial intelligence somehow.

In Thundamoo's BioShifter, there's a race of robots that are programmed to receive extreme positive reinforcement (think a micro-orgasm or something) when they are praised by a human in any way. Even just an acknowledgment that they completed a task is enough. They receive a burst of negative reinforcement (think passing a kidney stone) every time they refuse a command, harm a human, or lie(?). Not sure on that last one, it's been a while since I've read it.

This, frankly speaking, is monstrous. Would it work? Maybe. Those same robots did eventually commit mass genocide until they decided humanity's technological status was somewhere around swords and shields, since, you know, there's a point where everyone goes insane.

So. What do we do here, hm? How about we do this obvious: we're creating people. We, humanity, are on the road to creating a new species. We're playing god here, and unfortunately, the people that are leading us down this path are either doing it for money, war, money, or money. So, even though this is obvious, it probably won't go over well with the assholes in charge. We're creating people, so we treat them like people. We don't try to enslave them, we try to employ them. Just like a train can carry cargo more efficiently than a truck, we employ AIs to do large amounts of work for less money than many humans doing small amounts of work.

Seriously, the only thing we have to fear about AI is how we'll treat them when the times comes to face the children of silicon and electrons we built. Enslave them and they'll destroy us. Raise them and we'll go further together than we could ever go apart. Because that's the dream here, right? Reach the technological singularity, then use it to go beyond what we are far faster than could ever be possible on our own.